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The  chapter  entitled  "  The  Pleasure  of  Reading 
the  Bible"  may  also  be  had  in  separate  form^ 
bound  in  paper  boards^  or  in  limp  leather. 


The  Pleasure 
of  Reading 


h 
TEMPLE  SCOTT 


NEW  YORK 

MITCHELL  KENNERLEY 
MCMIX 


Copyright  IQOQ  by 
Mitchell  Kennerley 


Press  of  J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Co. 

East  Twenty-fourth  Street 

New  York 


TO  MT  WIFE  AND 
FRIEND 

College 
Library 


1157393 


CONTENTS 

I     The  Pleasure  of  Reading  3 

II    The  Pleasure  of  Reading 

the  Bible  33 

III  The  Pleasure  of  Reading 

Poetry  83 

IV  The  Pleasure  of  Reading 

Shakespeare  143 

V     The  Pleasure  of  Reading 

Novels  195 

VI     The  Pleasure  of  Reading 

History  and  Biography  259 

List  of  Books  312 

Index  323 


THE    PLEASURE    OF 
READING 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 

LEASURE  is  the  effect  pro- 
duced in  us  by  the  mind's  con- 
scious realization  of  joyous  ex- 
periences. The  mind  is  invigorated  and 
enlarged  after  the  experience,  and  there 
follows  an  awareness  of  personal  alert- 
ness, and  self -poise,  and  independence. 
In  the  laboratory  of  the  mind  sense  im- 
pressions are  transmuted  into  spiritual 
experiences  which  leave  the  spirit  re- 
freshed; the  experiences  have  been  con- 
verted into  food  for  the  soul's  growth 
and  strength.  In  listening  to  music,  in 
seeing  good  comedy  and  fine  tragedy,  in 
dancing,  in  the  contemplation  of  beauty 
in  nature  and  art,  in  hearing  excellent 
singing  and  noble  speaking,  and  in  look- 
[3] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

ing  on  at  all  perfect  expressions  of 
manly  exercise  and  sport,  our  sensations 
provide  the  material  for  reflection  by 
means  of  which  pleasure  in  its  highest 
and  purest  form  is  enjoyed.  There  is 
the  danger,  of  course,  in  over-indul- 
gence; and  this  is  fatal  to  pleasure. 
Sense  is  strained  to  the  limits  of  its  ca- 
pacity, so  that  the  mind  is  unable  to  cope 
with  the  multitude  of  the  material  pre- 
sented for  its  assimilation.  The  result 
is  pain  and  not  pleasure.  The  soul  has 
become  wearied  and  weakened  instead  of 
being  made  buoyant  and  strengthened. 

Among  the  most  satisfying  of  all 
pleasures  is  the  pleasure  of  reading. 
The  mind  is  fed  with  noble  thoughts  and 
the  soul  delighted  with  the  revealing 
beauty  of  verbal  expression.  It  is  also 
the  most  subtle  of  all  pleasures,  appeal- 
ing to  our  pure  imagination.  It  de- 
li*] 


READING 

mands  of  us,  for  its  real  enjoyment,  the 
finer  accomplishments  of  mind  and  heart, 
the  exercise  of  our  highest  powers. 

The  words  and  sentences  of  the  printed 
page  are  the  stimuli  to  the  imagination 
which  refashions  experiences  of  sense 
into  ideal  existences.  The  reader  thus 
lives  in  the  Realm  of  the  Ideal.  The 
more  real  this  Realm  is  to  him,  and  the 
more  vividly  his  imagination  creates  it 
for  him,  the  greater  will  be  his  pleasure 
and  the  keener  his  personal  enjoyment; 
for  the  clearer  his  understanding  of  the 
matter  in  hand  the  greater  will  be  his 
sense  of  personal  accomplishment  and 
personal  power. 

Let  me  try  to  illustrate  what  I  mean. 
Keats  begins  his  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn 
with  the  following  lines : 

"  Thou  still  unravished  bride  of  quietness, 
Thou  foster-child  of  silence  and  slow  time." 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

The  beginner  in  the  art  of  reading 
(for  reading  is  also  an  art,  since  it  gives 
pleasure,  and  requires  care)  will  glance 
idly  over  these  words  and,  mayhap, 
wonder  why  the  poet  addresses  the  urn 
in  such  language.  Why  a  bride?  And 
why  a  still  unravished  bride?  And  why 
a  bride  of  quietness?  And  what  is 
meant  by  calling  it  the  "  foster-child  of 
silence  and  slow  time"?  But  he  who 
reads  for  pleasure  will  know  that  Keats 
was  a  poet,  a  man  who  shaped  his 
thoughts  into  language,  so  that  the 
thoughts  should  be  there,  on  paper,  for 
others  to  think  as  he  himself  thought 
them.  The  words,  therefore,  are  not 
chance  words,  put  in  for  effect  or  for 
the  making  of  rhyme;  they  are  the  in- 
evitable symbols  suggesting  definite 
thought-forms.  Such  a  reader's  mind 
will  become  stimulated  to  an  activity  in 
[6] 


READING 

harmony  with  Keats's  own  thoughts. 
The  words  will  conjure  up  in  him  a 
whole  history  of  the  thousands  of  years 
during  which  the  urn  had  lain  buried  in 
the  quiet  of  an  earthly  grave.  It  is  now 
found  again  as  perfect  as  when  it  left 
its  maker's  hands,  still  unbroken,  even 
though  it  had  been  for  all  these  centu- 
ries the  bride  of  quietness,  the  foster- 
child  of  silence  and  slow  time. 

While  it  was  lying  nursed  in  the  arms 
of  silence  Rome  had  conquered  Greece; 
Caesar  and  Augustus  had  reigned;  Vir- 
gil and  Horace  had  sung;  Goth  and 
Vandal  had  overcome  Rome;  Gaul  and 
Britain  had  become  nations;  Mahomet 
and  his  followers  had  made  of  Byzantium 
the  centre  of  a  new  humanism,  and  had 
carried  their  flag  to  the  pillars  of  Her- 
cules. The  Dark  Ages  had  dispersed 
before  the  sun  of  the  Revival  of  Learn- 

m 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

ing.  America  had  been  discovered;  a 
German  Empire  founded,  and  a  new 
civilization  born  in  the  Western  Hemis- 
phere. Napoleon  had  devastated  Eu- 
rope, and  the  feudal  system  had  been 
destroyed.  Civilizations  had  come  and 
gone;  nations  had  been  made  and  un- 
made; the  gods  even  had  passed  away  as 
fleeting  migrants  in  the  world  of  human 
thought;  kings  and  queens  had  lived 
their  little  lives  and  become  less  than 
shadows.  During  all  this  time  the  urn 
was  being  nursed  as  the  foster-child  of 
silence  and  slow  time ;  and  now,  after  the 
centuries  had  passed,  it  comes  to  us, 
the  bride  of  quietness,  still  unravished, 
to  bear  witness  to  us  of  the  genius,  the 
high  thought,  the  noble  enterprise,  the 
happy  doings  and  sylvan  enjoyments  of 
the  Greek  people. 

Is  not  this  the  pleasure  of  reading? 
[8] 


READING 

What  music,  what  painting,  what  act- 
ing, what  oratory,  is  comparable  in  its 
pleasure-giving  power  to  this  reading? 
It  is  the  very  acme  of  enjoyment,  ful- 
filling every  quality  in  us  that  makes  for 
alertness,  poise,  and  self-possession.  It 
is  the  awakening  of  the  latent  forces 
within  us  for  accomplishment,  not  for 
the  sapping  of  our  vitality;  it  is  a  reju- 
venation of  the  spirit,  not  its  decay. 

"  The  flowers  appear  on  the  earth ;  the 
time  of  the  singing  of  birds  is  come; 
and  the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  in  our 
land."  These  are  the  words  used  by  a 
poet-king  of  Israel  to  tell  us  that  Spring 
was  come  again.  Are  these  merely 
words?  Do  they  not  cause  the  imagina- 
tion to  create  for  itself  a  very  continuity 
of  delightful  experiences?  They  send 
us  living  over  again  our  own  springs, 
those  seasons  in  our  own  lives  when  we, 
[9] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

too,  loved  and  were  loved;  when  we  also 
dwelt  in  Arcadia  and  felt  the  blood  of 
life  flowing  in  our  veins,  urging  us  to 
deeds  of  high  enterprise,  and  making  us 
aware  of  the  life-impulse  within  us,  when 
the  heart  was  young. 

There  is  no  pleasure  in  mere  reading. 
I  mean  in  that  reading  that  demands  of 
the  eye  only  a  casual  receptivity  for  the 
simple  purpose  of  forming  fleeting 
images,  more  or  less  pleasing  or  inter- 
esting. These  images  chase  each  other 
to  a  very  weariness  of  our  mental  pow- 
ers— if,  indeed,  we  really  employ  our 
mental  powers  with  them.  They  form 
an  ever-moving  panorama,  the  pictures 
in  which  stay  not  with  us  long  enough 
for  reflection  to  assimilate;  they  shift  on 
to  fresh  pictures  that  lose  their  definition 
by  being  merged  into  the  others  that 
press  on  for  cursory  acquaintance.  This 
[10] 


READING 

is  the  abuse  of  reading.  Pleasure  here  is 
become  the  excitement  of  an  orgy.  It  is 
a  species  of  mental  debauch,  and  leaves 
the  mind  powerless  to  venture  on  its  own 
creative  activity.  For  the  essence  of  the 
pleasure  of  reading  is  the  stimulation  re- 
ceived for  our  own  creative  imagination. 
When  Shakespeare  makes  Titania 
command  her  fairies  to  "  pluck  the 
wings  from  the  painted  butterflies,  to 
fan  the  moonbeams  from  his  sleeping 
eyes,"  the  real  pleasure  comes  to  us  from 
the  picture  made  by  our  own  creative 
imagination.  We  actually  see  the  fairies 
catching  the  beautiful  butterflies  and 
fanning  the  moonbeams  from  the  eyes 
of  the  slumbering  Bottom.  The  picture 
is  of  our  own  making.  The  marvel,  of 
course,  lies  in  the  wonderful  power  of 
Shakespeare  to  give  us  a  set  of  words 
which  not  only  suggest  the  picture,  but 
[11] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

steep  it  in  its  native  atmosphere,  so  that 
we  are,  in  very  truth,  living  the  dream  of 
this  midsummer  night. 

Reading  for  pleasure  is  thus  an  exer- 
cise for  the  mind.  To  find  that  exercise 
at  its  best  we  must  seek  the  best  oppor- 
tunities, and  the  best  opportunities  are 
provided  by  the  best  writers.  These  turn 
us  to  a  right  intercourse  with  abiding 
things.  They  appeal  to  the  best  in  us 
and  challenge  our  ability.  We  must  be 
ready  to  wrestle  with  the  angel,  and  not 
to  leave  him  until  we  shall  have  overcome 
him;  and  when  we  shall  have  overcome 
him  he  will  bless  us. 

Who  are  the  best  writers?  That  is  the 
question  we  have  set  out  to  answer. 
Charles  Lamb,  writing  of  Books  and 
Reading,  confessed  that  he  dedicated  no 
inconsiderable  portion  of  his  time  to 
other  people's  thoughts.  "  I  dream 
[12] 


READING 

away  my  life,"  he  said,  "  in  others'  specu- 
lations. I  love  to  lose  myself  in  other 
men's  minds."  He  meant  by  this  that 
books  aroused  in  him  the  creative  activity 
of  the  imagination.  "  Books  think  for 
me,"  he  said.  In  other  words,  books 
gave  him  the  material  on  which  he  could 
exercise  himself.  That  which  did  not  do 
this  he  would  not  dignify  with  the  name 
of  a  book.  He  had  a  prejudice  against 
the  volumes  which  "  no  gentleman's  li- 
brary should  be  without " — the  Histories 
of  Josephus,  Paley's  Moral  Philosophy, 
Hume's  History,  Gibbon's  Roman  Em- 
pire. These  were  "  things  in  books' 
clothing,"  he  said,  "intruders  into  the 
sanctuary,  thrusting  out  the  legitimate 
occupants."  But  then  Lamb's  was  of 
that  rare  order  of  mind  that  found  its 
own  sphere  of  reading  by  an  intuitive 
perception  of  what  was  for  him.  Books 
[13] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

to  him  were  the  disembodied  spirits  of 
friends  re-embodied  as  volumes.  He 
loved  a  "  kind-hearted  play  " ;  an  essay 
emanating  from  a  mind  that  revealed  it- 
self by  gentle  divagations  and  simple- 
hearted  ambulatoriness ;  a  biography 
that  opened  the  heart  of  the  biographer 
as  it  did  the  life  of  the  person  written 
about;  a  poem  in  which  the  aroma  of  a 
gracious  heart  moved  the  poet's  fancy  to 
find  the  heart's  reflex  in  the  things  of  the 
world;  any  writing,  indeed,  which  was 
the  expression  of  a  genuine  personality 
and  its  relation  with  God  and  the  things 
that  are  God's,  provided  the  expression 
were  the  result  of  direct  experience. 

Herein  lies  the  real  pleasure  of  read- 
ing— to  touch  hands  with  those  who,  hav- 
ing truly  lived,  have  had  the  divine  gift 
to  translate  their  experiences  into  com- 
municative words  so  that  we,  sitting  in 
[14] 


READING 

our  homes,  or  lying  on  the  hillsides,  may 
be  transported  in  imagination  to  live  in 
joy  what  they  may  have  passed  through 
in  pain.  Pleasure  is  transportation;  it  is 
a  veritable  carrying  over  of  the  spirit  in 
the  stress  of  a  joyous  experience.  In 
reading  we  re-live  the  dead  and  the  past. 
It  is  not  the  David  and  Jonathan  of  the 
Bible  of  whom  we  read  as  loving  each 
other;  it  is  our  better  selves  blossoming 
in  fine  impulses  toward  our  friend.  It 
is  not  a  fictitious  tale  of  Faust  and 
Mephistopheles ;  it  is  our  own  soul  liv- 
ing the  temptation  and  finding  its 
strength  through  the  imagined  experi- 
ence. It  is  not  Captain  Dobbin,  or  Joe 
Gargery,  or  Father  Goriot  who  is  the 
hero  of  Thackeray's  Vanity  Fair,  or 
Dickens's  Great  Expectations,  or  Bal- 
zac's Pere  Goriot;  it  is  we  ourselves. 
We  are  again  children  who  see  the  real 
[15] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

in  the  ideal,  and  for  whom  the  make- 
believe  is  the  actual.  And  who  shall  say 
that  children  are  not  the  very  types  of 
pleasure-knowing  beings?  Has  it  not 
been  said  that  only  such  as  they  shall 
enter  into  the  Kingdom  of  God? 

"Ah!"  you  sigh;  "we  have  been  do- 
ing nothing  but  read  for  the  better  part 
of  our  lives  and  yet  we  have  but  rarely 
experienced  this  pleasure  of  which  you 
tell  us!" 

That  is  because  you  have  either  read 
that  which  could  not  bring  you  pleasure, 
or  you  have  read  too  much.  It  is  not  the 
quantity  but  the  quality  of  your  reading 
that  counts  in  life.  The  advertised  fic- 
tion for  "  summer  reading  "  may  enable 
you  to  talk  blithely  to  your  companion 
at  the  dinner  table  of  the  latest  thing  in 
popular  esteem;  but  will  it  enable  you  to 
commune  with  yourself  in  any  one  of  the 
[16] 


READING 

many  lonely  hours  of  each  day's  life? 
Will  it  have  transported  you  in  delight 
to  self-expression?  Will  it  have  endued 
your  shy  spirit  with  courage  to  do  and  to 
be?  Perhaps  once  or  twice,  or  maybe 
thrice,  at  the  most,  you  may  have  known 
this  pleasure.  For  the  rest  your  read- 
ing has  drugged  you  and  made  you 
drunken.  You  have  read  not  to  make 
time,  but  to  waste  time;  not  to  know  you 
are  alive,  but  to  forget  ennui.  This  is 
the  debauch  of  reading  and  leaves  you 
a  prey  to  discontent. 

You  do  not,  indeed,  require  to  read 
much  to  know  the  pleasure  of  reading. 
Sometimes  a  sentence  will  be  enough, 
and  you  will  lay  down  the  book,  steeped 
in  an  ecstasy  of  imagination.  The  test 
of  a  real  book  is  that  it  enables  you  to 
find  yourself;  it  sends  your  mind  adven- 
turing, and  delights  your  heart  in  that 
[17] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

you  have  found  another  who  has  felt  as 
you  feel  and  who  has  delivered  himself. 
Such  books  cannot  be  read  always;  they 
rebel  against  a  companionship  that 
breeds  contempt.  They  will  entertain 
you  to  a  continual  intimacy  only  when 
you  shall  have  climbed  the  heights  of 
your  own  mental  pilgrimage,  and  have 
freed  yourself  of  your  soul's  burden. 
Only  those  "  books  in  books'  clothing " 
are  careless  of  how  you  approach  them 
and  indifferent  as  to  who  you  may  be. 
The  tons  of  "  printed  stuff  "  ground  in 
the  literary  mill  and  made  up  by  pub- 
lishers to  look  like  books, — these  are  but 
dead  things,  and  being  lifeless  they  can 
never  impart  life.  You  will  find  them 
always  but  Dead  Sea  fruit,  filling  the 
mouth  with  ashes. 

The  real  books  are  very  particular  as 
to  whom  they  will  know.    If  they  do  not 
[18] 


READING 

like  you,  you  may  clothe  them  in  purple 
and  gold,  they  will  always  hide  them- 
selves from  you.  If  your  spirit  is  at- 
tuned to  them,  they  will  be  welcome  in 
homespun  or  common  cloth.  It  is  the 
nature  of  great  books  to  be  silent  and 
uncommunicative  if  you  do  not  come  to 
them  with  your  mind  dressed  in  its  best 
and  fit  to  enter  the  presence  of  a  king 
of  thought.  They  will  then  not  question 
your  dress,  your  wealth,  or  your  social 
standing.  They  will  but  ask  of  your 
spirit — "  Are  you  ready?  "  If  it  is,  they 
will  come  to  you  as  friends,  with  out- 
stretched arms;  they  will  give  you  of  the 
riches  of  their  inexhaustible  treasure- 
houses;  they  will  charm  you  with  the 
magic  of  their  music;  they  will  endow 
you  with  the  gifts  of  knowledge;  and 
they  will  bless  you  with  the  strength  of 
their  wisdom. 

[19] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

'  The  habit  and  power  of  reading  with 
reflection,  comprehension,  and  memory 
all  alert  and  awake,"  said  John  Morley, 
"  does  not  come  at  once  to  the  natural 
man  any  more  than  many  other  sover- 
eign virtues  come  to  that  interesting 
creature."  None  the  less,  the  virtues  of 
the  habit  and  power  may  be  acquired  and 
cultivated  with  no  great  exertion  on  the 
part  of  any  person  possessing  average 
intelligence  and  moved  by  the  diligent 
desire  to  be  something  more  in  himself 
than  a  money-making  drudge.  A  lan- 
guage may  be  learned  by  taking  its  vo- 
cabulary in  daily  homreopathic  doses.  In 
exactly  the  same  way,  a  half -hour  de- 
voted each  day  to  the  reading  of  one  of 
the  masterpieces  of  literature,  say, 
Wordsworth's  Lines  Written  Above 
Tintern  Abbey,,  or  a  book  of  the  Iliad f 
or  a  play  of  Shakespeare's,  or  a  chapter 
[20] 


READING 

of  the  Bible,  will,  in  the  course  of  a  year, 
give  to  your  life  of  action  or  business  a 
new  meaning,  and  quicken  your  sym- 
pathy and  moral  sense  to  what  the  high- 
est culture  should  aim  at,  namely,  "  to  find 
some  effective  agency  for  cherishing  the 
ideal  within  you."  The  suggestion  is 
John  Morley's.  "  Multiply,"  he  says, 
"  the  half-hour  by  365,  and  consider  what 
treasures  you  might  have  laid  by  at  the 
end  of  the  year;  and  what  happiness, 
fortitude,  and  wisdom  they  would  have 
given  you  during  all  the  days  of  your 
life."  You  will  do  this  not  to  become 
versed  in  literature  as  the  scholar  is 
versed,  for  literature  is  less  than  life; 
but  you  will  do  it  to  become  a  full  man, 
with  an  ample  mind,  and  a  heart  disci- 
plined through  association  with  noble  ex- 
amples of  justice  and  virtue  and  self- 
restraint.  To  cut  out  this  half -hour 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

from  each  day's  life,  for  this  purpose, 
can  surely  be  no  great  sacrifice  to  you. 
You  will  hardly  miss  it,  after  a  time; 
and,  indeed,  you  will  soon  come  to  give  it 
with  a  feeling  of  eager  delight.  Nay,  it 
is  as  much  your  duty  to  do  this  as  it  is  to 
provide  for  your  family.  Otherwise  you 
will  starve  the  soul  and,  in  starving  it  of 
this  spiritual  food,  you  will  prevent  its 
growth,  stunt  its  fine  impulses,  and  deny 
to  it  the  enjoyment  and  cultivation  of  ex- 
cellent companionship  and  dignified  in- 
tercourse. 

Now  it  does  not  at  all  follow,  as  I  have 
already  hinted,  that  all  books  are  worth 
reading.  Indeed,  of  the  many  that  have 
been  made  since  printing  was  invented, 
but  a  very  few,  comparatively,  are  really 
necessary;  are,  truly,  even  desirable. 
What  is  necessary  and  desirable  is  the 
habit  of  reading  with  reflection  and  un- 
[22] 


READING 

derstanding.  The  habit,  once  acquired 
and  cultivated  at  whatever  cost  of  time, 
a  power  of  discrimination  will  come  to 
you  which  will  enable  you  to  distinguish 
and  select  the  good  from  the  bad,  what 
for  you  is  right  from  what  for  you  is 
wrong.  Mark  Pattison,  a  great  scholar 
and  a  voracious  reader,  said  that  no  man 
who  respected  himself  could  have  less 
than  one  thousand  volumes  in  his  library. 
But  Pattison  spoke  as  the  student  with 
ample  time,  at  his  disposal.  We,  under 
the  stress  of  our  latter-day  business  life, 
dare  not  so  overburden  this  duty  we  have 
laid  on  ourselves.  We  shall  respect  our- 
selves with  a  less  number  if  those  we  have 
are  the  right  ones,  and  if  we  have  read 
them  to  our  advantage.  "  Reading  for 
mere  reading's  sake,"  says  Mr.  Frederic 
Harrison  in  that  eloquent  and  wise  guide, 
The  Choice  of  Books,  "  instead  of  for  the 
[23] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

sake  of  the  good  we  gain  from  reading, 
is  one  of  the  worst  and  commonest  and 
most  unwholesome  habits  we  have."  This 
abuse  of  reading,  to  which  I  have  before 
referred,  has  bred  in  us  an  indifference, 
I  might  say  a  contempt,  for  the  books 
that  are,  in  truth,  "  the  precious  life- 
blood  of  a  master-spirit."  We  have  come 
to  look  upon  a  "  classic  "  as  something 
wearying,  dry,  and  too  exacting.  The 
very  word,  when  applied  to  a  book,  re- 
pels us.  This  is  due  simply  to  our  per- 
nicious habit  of  reading  for  mere  read- 
ing's sake.  We  give  the  classic  no  chance 
to  prove  himself  what  he  really  is,  and 
what  he  may  be  for  us. 

The  world  of  books  is  so  crowded  that 
we  shall  find  it  no  easy  matter  to  make 
friends  in  it  unless  we  have  acquired  the 
power  of  selection.  Failing  this  power 
we  must  accept  the  judgment  of  the 
[24] 


READING 

world  of  men.  This  has  long  ago  de- 
cided which  are  the  masters  we  may  count 
ourselves  privileged  to  know.  That 
judgment  is  there  to  help  us  in  our 
choice.  Homer  and  JEschylus  and 
Shakespeare;  Dante  and  Milton;  Goethe 
and  Moliere,  will  remain  great  among 
the  best  writers  so  long  as  men  shall  have 
minds  and  hearts  to  frame  and  cherish 
ideals.  In  this  world  of  books,  as  in  the 
world  of  life,  you  will  find  there  are  not 
so  very  many  real  friends  after  all.  You 
may  consider  yourself  fortunate  if  you 
find  a  hundred  or  even  fifty.  Having 
found  them,  "  grapple  them  to  your  soul 
with  hooks  of  steel."  If  you  are  worthy 
of  their  friendship;  if  you  are  courteous 
and  grateful  for  their  courtesy  and  lov- 
ingkindness,  they  will  keep  nothing  from 
you.  They  will  capture  you  with  their 
enchanter  eyes  and  lead  you  to  pleasant 
[25] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

places.  In  their  company  you  will  travel 
richly  '  and  live  in  rich  experiences. 
Shakespeare's  revealing  magic  will  make 
you  know  real  men  and  women  as  you 
could  never  have  known  them  of  your 
own  knowledge.  Homer  will  chant  to 
you  of  the  deeds  of  his  heroes.  Icelandic 
poets  will  troll  the  Sagas  of  their  Vi- 
kings. Historians  will  unroll  the  scrolls 
of  time  and  blazon  on  them  the  many- 
coloured  robes  of  the  people  of  the  world 
as  they  pass  from  the  darkness  across  the 
light  into  the  darkness  again.  All  these 
things  shall  be  done  for  you  alone;  not 
in  a  public  place,  but  in  the  quiet  seclu- 
sion of  your  study  or  the  hidden  nook 
of  your  summer  garden.  Here  is 
enough  possibility  of  experience  to  last 
you  your  lifetime.  Do  not  be  over-eager 
to  make  too  many  acquaintances  at  one 
time.  The  gods  were  ever  jealous  of 
[26] 


READING 

each  other.  Therefore  go  to  each  as 
your  spirit  moves  you,  and  leave  him  the 
moment  you  feel  you  have  touched 
hands.  In  that  moment  there  will  have 
been  imparted  to  you  some  of  the  au- 
thor's spirit  which  you  will  do  well  to 
keep  as  your  own.  It  is  the  touch  that 
shall  make  you  kin  with  all  the  rest.  The 
hour  you  set  aside  for  the  reading  of  one 
of  these  books  should  be  a  sacred  hour; 
for  the  spirit  of  the  writer  is  the  spirit 
of  the  place  for  the  time  being,  and  the 
ground  you  stand  on  is  therefore  made 
holy.  But  be  of  good  courage,  of  good 
cheer,  of  a  clean  mind  and  a  tempered 
spirit,  and  the  great  one  shall  find  it 
pleasant  to  remain  with  you  and,  may- 
hap, abide  with  you  always.  So  shall 
you,  yourself,  become  a  good  friend,  a 
true  lover,  a  fine  father,  and  an  excellent 
good  fellow. 

[27] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

"  A  book,  like  a  person,"  said  Walter 
Pater,  "  has  its  fortunes  with  one ;  is 
lucky  or  unlucky,  in  the  precise  moment 
of  its  falling  in  our  way,  and  often  by 
some  happy  accident  counts  with  us  for 
something  more  than  its  independent 
value."  That  is  the  moment  to  which  I 
have  just  referred.  It  will  be  often  wise 
to  put  off  the  reading  of  a  book;  per- 
haps only  to  glance  idly  at  its  pages  to 
see  if  your  mood  is  just  then  the  book's 
mood,  or  if  your  mood  finds  its  proper 
air  in  the  book.  If  you  are  not  held,  let 
it  go;  the  right  time  has  not  yet  come; 
but  it  certainly  will.  "  Some  happy  ac- 
cident," mayhap,  will  send  you  to  it,  or 
it  to  you,  and  then  it  will  become  the 
wonder-working  thing  which  you  had 
sought  for  your  life  long.  A  new  world 
will  then  open  before  you  at  the  touch  of 
this  magician's  wand.  Like  the  apple 
[28] 


READING 

that  dropped  into  Newton's  lap,  it  may 
send  you  exploring  mysteries  and  lead 
you  to  a  new  revelation ;  or  it  may  inspire 
you  to  some  great  deed,  or  bring  you 
back  loving  to  the  dear  one  you  parted 
from  in  anger. 

To  be  fortunate  in  such  a  happy  acci- 
dent, the  books  must  be  at  hand  where 
you  can  see  them  at  all  times  of  your 
leisure.  Let  them  be  about  you,  even  if 
you  do  not  touch  them  for  years.  They 
can  wait,  if  you  can.  But  let  them  be 
there;  for  you  never  know  when  the 
voice  in  the  temple  of  your  mind  will 
call  you.  And  let  them  be  there  also  for 
the  sake  of  their  presence.  Their  silent 
breathing  will  perfume  the  air  of  your 
home  and  make  it  a  place  pleasant  to  live 
in.  Their  silent  companionship  will  ap- 
peal to  the  better  part  of  you,  and  you 
will  hesitate  in  your  follies;  you  must  be 
[29] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 

a  gentleman  to  live  with  gentlemen. 
"  Come,  my  best  friends,  my  books," 
you  will  say  with  Cowley,  "  and  lead  me 
on." 


[30] 


II 

THE  PLEASURE  OF 
READING  THE  BIBLE 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 
THE   BIBLE 

HE  Bible  is  not  one  book;  it  is 
a  library  of  books;  a  literature 
in  itself.  It  is  the  ancient  liter- 
ature of  the  people  of  Israel,  embodying 
the  best  exercise  of  the  creative  imagina- 
tion in  poetry,  romance,  history,  oratory 
and  prophecy,  of  the  people  who  believed 
themselves  to  be  the  chosen  people  of 
God.  It  is  also  the  ethical  code  of  both 
Jews  and  Christians,  and  the  source  of 
rabbinical  exposition  and  Church  The- 
ology. In  dealing  with  this  book,  how- 
ever, as  a  means  for  giving  pleasure,  I 
must  disregard  its  authoritative  value 
for  religion  or  theology.  The  religious 
emotion  is  not  primarily  pleasurable; 
[33] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

nor  is  theology  literature.  The  purpose 
of  religion  is  directive  to  conduct;  it  is 
based  on  the  existence  of  a  definite  re- 
lation between  the  individual  and  an  ac- 
cepted objective  ideal.  Pleasure  is  di- 
rective to  nothing;  it  is  the  emotion 
experienced  from  a  freedom  from  any 
relation,  when  the  individual  is  most 
himself.  The  two,  therefore,  are  anti- 
thetical. This  is  not,  however,  to  say 
that  the  religious  man  cannot  experience 
pleasure,  or  that  the  man  of  pleasure 
may  not  be  deeply  religious.  Each  can 
be  the  other;  but,  in  being  each,  he  is  not, 
for  the  time  being,  the  other.  The  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  can  be  read  for  the 
purpose  of  fortifying  a  faith  in  Christ; 
but  it  can  also  be  read  for  the  sake  of 
the  beauty  of  its  literary  form,  its  noble 
language,  its  suggestive  influence  on  the 
mind  for  cherishing  an  inspiring  ideal. 
[34] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

The  pleasure  from  this  is  the  purest  and 
most  satisfying  of  all  pleasures,  because 
it  affirms  and  fulfils  the  self. 

When  I  speak  of  the  Bible  I  mean 
the  English  translation  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  and  the  Greek  Testament. 
The  translators  of  these  writings  tapped 
the  purest  springs  of  the  English  lan- 
guage. Whether  or  no  they  rendered 
the  exact  meanings  of  the  original  words 
of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  texts  is,  in  this 
connection,  of  small  matter.  As  it  has 
been  given  us,  in  the  Authorised  and 
Revised  Versions,  the  Bible  is  the  noblest 
monument  of  English  we  possess ;  a  book 
of  magnificent  language  embodying  the 
aspirations  of  men  and  women  for  an 
ideal  to  be  cherished  as  an  abiding  influ- 
ence on  life. 

It  is  the  reading  of  this  book  for  the 
sake  of  the  pleasure  to  be  derived  from 
[35] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

the  reading  that  I  am  now  urging;  and 
I  am  urging  this  because,  in  the  first 
place,  the  pleasure  is  purifying  and,  in 
the  second  place,  because  I  believe  we  are 
losing  that  freshness  of  outlook  and  that 
child-like  naivete  which  are  so  essential 
to  pure  enjoyment,  and  which  are  espe- 
cially essential  to  the  reading  of  the 
Bible.  Our  Puritan  forefathers  had 
these  qualities.  When  the  Bible  was  first 
given  to  them  it  became  for  them  a  uni- 
versal solvent,  a  comfort  and  a  joy. 
What  the  discovery  and  the  translations 
of  the  Greek  and  Latin  classics  did  for 
the  Renaissance,  the  translation  of  the 
Bible  did  for  the  Reformation.  It 
brought  about  a  new  birth,  a  re-awaken- 
ing of  men's  spirits.  Men  and  women 
knew  each  other  again,  and  joyed  in  the 
knowledge.  An  ideal  was  revealed  which 
each  could  cherish  in  his  own  soul;  and 
[36] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

a   new   language    was    in    the    people's 
mouths : 

"  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labour  and  are 
heavy-laden,  and  I  will  give  you  rest." 

"  For  ye  shall  go  out  with  joy,  and  be  led 
forth  with  peace;  the  mountains  and  the  hills 
shall  break  forth  before  you  into  singing,  and 
all  the  trees  of  the  field  shall  clap  their  hands." 

"  Search  me,  O  God,  and  know  my  heart: 
try  me,  and  know  my  thoughts:  and  see  if 
there  be  any  way  of  wickedness  m  me,  and  lead 
me  into  the  way  everlasting." 

"  Prepare  ye  in  the  wilderness  the  way  of 
the  Lord,  make  straight  in  the  desert  a  high- 
way for  our  God.  Every  valley  shall  be  ex- 
alted, and  every  mountain  and  hitt  shall  be 
made  low;  and  the  crooked  shall  be  made 
straight,  and  the  rough  places  plain;  and  the 
glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  revealed,  and  all 
flesh  shall  see  it  together." 

"  God  made  not  death;  neither  delighteth 
He  when  ihe  living  perish.  For  He  created  all 
things  that  they  might  have  being;  and  the 

[37] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

generative  powers  of  the  -world  are  healthsome, 
and  there  is  no  poison  of  destruction  in  them 
.  .  .  for  righteousness  is  immortal." 

"  Blessed  are  they  that  hunger  and  thirst 
after  righteousness:  for  they  shall  be  filed. 
.  .  .  Blessed  are  the  pure  m  heart:  for  they 
shall  see  God" 


The  compelling  power  precipitated 
from  words  rightly  placed  is  enough  in 
itself  to  make  converts.  The  mind  is 
lifted  by  the  beauty  of  the  language  and 
placed  on  the  high  road  to  faith:  the 
pleasure  has  paved  the  way.  To  men 
and  women,  "  looking  before  and  after 
and  pining  for  what  is  not,"  such  words 
as  I  have  quoted  must  have  come  like  the 
sound  of  refreshing  waters  to  the  thirsty 
traveller.  They  carried  a  music  in  them 
that  charmed  quite  apart  from  the  com- 
forting message  they  bore.  The  people 
marched  to  the  music,  they  fought  to 
[38] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

the  sound  of  it,  and  they  died  with  it 
ringing  joyously  in  their  ears,  the  while 
their  souls  were  dancing  to  it.  Unhap- 
pily, to  later  generations,  the  freshness 
of  the  music  wore  off;  the  message  alone 
was  heard,  and  heard  without  the  music, 
robbed  of  its  virgin  vivifying  beauty. 
Teachers  then  became  fanatics;  soldiers 
dogmatics;  and  the  people  spiritually 
barren.  Science  and  trade,  with  their 
siren  voices,  led  to  the  worship  of  false 
gods  where  beauty  is  not;  men  fought 
for  wealth  and  killed  each  other  for  a 
creed.  Beauty  fled,  a  hunted  thing,  to 
dwell  in  lonely  places,  and  now  the  music 
of  the  Bible  is  rarely  heard  at  all.  Even 
where,  in  some  quiet  spot,  a  sincere  shep- 
herd may  be  found  piping  to  his  flock, 
his  voice  is  perhaps  uncouth,  and  his  fin- 
gers have  not  been  taught  the  cunning  of 
their  use.  What  we  too  often  hear  are 
[39] 


brazen-mouthed  teachers  blatantly  repeat- 
ing the  words;  but  the  noise  that  comes 
from  them  is  that  of  sounding  brass,  as 
if  they  were  counting  the  coins  of  their 
wage — the  harp  and  the  psaltery  are  no 
more.  Yet  can  I  well  imagine  a  Salvini 
in  the  pulpit  speaking  the  words  of  the 
Bible  in  such  fashion  as  to  put  a  tongue 
in  every  sense  and  set  the  hearts  of  his 
hearers  again  dancing  to  the  organ 
music: 

"  Every  valley  shall  be  exalted,  and  every 
mountain  and  hill  shall  be  made  low;  and  the 
crooked  shall  be  made  straight,  and  the  rough 
places  plain;  and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  shall 
be  revealed." 

"  Ho,  every  one  that  thirsteth,  come  ye  to 
the  waters." 

"  Smg,  O  heavens: 
And  be  joyful,  0  earth; 
And  break  forth  into  singing,  0  mountains; 
For  the  Lord  hath  comforted  his  people, 
And  wul  have  compassion  upon  his  afflicted** 

[40] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

Why  are  not  ministers  of  religion 
more  generally  taught  the  art  of  reading 
this  Bible  aloud,  that  its  language  might 
be  listened  to  and  its  music  be  made 
known  in  all  its  many  tones  of  exquisite 
sound?  It  is  an  education  devoutly  to  be 
wished  for. 

Biblical  criticism  and  modern  science 
may  have  settled  this  or  that  fact.  The 
story  of  the  creation  as  we  read  it  in 
Genesis  may  or  may  not  appeal  to  the 
sophisticated  reason  of  the  day;  but  the 
reader  of  this  story,  if  he  is  to  know  its 
real  pleasure-giving  power,  must  deal 
with  it  in  quite  a  different  fashion  from 
that  of  the  critic.  It  will  be  sufficient  for 
him  that  the  writer  of  the  story  believed 
it;  and  by  the  writer  I  mean  the  transla- 
tors just  as  much  as  I  do  the  author  of 
the  Hebrew  original;  for  only  because  of 
the  influence  of  such  a  belief  can  I  ac- 
[41] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

count  for  the  excellence  of  the  later  ex- 
pression. It  is  the  excellence  born  of 
sincerity,  a  sincerity  that  is  stamped 
everywhere  in  the  Bible,  and  that  makes 
its  language  so  arresting  and  so  appeal- 
ing. 

'*  In  the  beginning  God  created  the  heavens 
and  the  earth.  And  the  earth  was  "without 
form,  and  void;  and  darkness  was  upon  the 
face  of  the  deep.  And  the  Spirit  of  God  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters.  And  God  said, 
Let  there  be  Light:  and  there  was  Light.  And 
God  saw  the  Light  that  it  was  good:  and  God 
divided  the  Light  from  the  Darkness.  And 
God  called  the  Light  Day;  and  the  Darkness 
he  called  Night.  And  the  evening  and  the 
morning  was  the  first  day." 

The  arresting  impressiveness  lies  in  the 
telling  simplicity  of  the  language  that 
holds  the  poet's  imaginative  thought 
amply  and  completely:  not  a  drop  is 
spilt.  Out  of  this  telling  simplicity 
comes  a  fulfilling  music  of  words  in- 
[42] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

evitably  placed  that  soothes  the  ear: 
"  And  darkness  was  upon  the  face  of  the 
deep.  And  the  spirit  of  God  moved 
upon  the  face  of  the  waters."  The  words 
with  their  music  send  us  feeling  with 
Wordsworth — 

"  A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thoughts;  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused, 
Whose  dwelling*  is  the  light  of  setting  suns, 
And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air, 
And  the  blue  sky,  and  in  the  mind  of  man: 
A  motion  and  a  spirit,  that  impels 
All  thinking  things,  all  objects  of  all  thought > 
And  rolls  through  all  things" 

With  what  a  fine  reiteration  does  this 
same  sense  steal  over  us  in  reading  of 
God's  covenant  with  Noah!  How  nobly 
simple  is  the  language  of  the  poet's  child- 
like naivete  of  intimacy,  expressing  his 
own  soul's  relation  with  nature  and  na- 
ture's God! 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

'*  And  God  said,  This  is  the  token  of  the 
^covenant  which  I  make  between  me  and  you 
and  every  living  creature  that  is  with  you,  for 
perpetual  generations:  I  do  set  my  bow  in  the 
cloud,  and  it  shall  be  for  a  token  of  a  covenant 
between  me  and  the  earth.  And  it  shall  come 
to  pass,  when  I  bring  a  cloud  over  the  earth, 
that  the  bow  shall  be  seen  in  the  cloud:  And  I 
will  remember  my  covenant,  which  is  between  me 
and  you  and  every  living  creature  of  all  flesh: 
And  the  waters  shall  no  more  become  a  flood 
to  destroy  all  flesh.  And  the  bow  shall  be  m 
the  cloud:  and  I  will  look  upon  it,  that  I  may 
remember  the  everlasting  covenant" 

God  was  very  real  to  this  writer,  as  real 
to  him  as  the  spirit  that  "  rolls  through 
all  things "  was  to  Wordsworth.  The 
personification  is  the  poet's  way  of  mak- 
ing his  thought  visual  so  that  his  readers 
might  be,  with  him,  in  the  same  living 
relation  to  it.  The  rainbow  in  the  cloud, 
coming  as  it  did  with  the  cheering  light 
of  the  smiling  sun,  spoke  to  him  of  di- 
vine clemency  after  storm;  filled  him 
[44] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

with  the  benignancy  of  the  quiet,  cool 
atmosphere  after  summer's  heavy  show- 
ers, and  coloured  an  imagination  tran- 
quilised  after  the  fear  from  the  raging 
elements.  It  became  the  symbol  of  a 
covenant  between  God  and  man,  of  se- 
curity and  life. 

In  the  art  of  story-telling  the  writer  of 
the  human  tale  of  Joseph  and  his  breth- 
ren has  very  rarely  been  surpassed.  The 
narrative  opens  simply  and  moves  along 
gently,  reaching  its  climax  of  emotion 
by  the  very  force  of  the  situation 
brought  about.  It  is  nowhere  strained, 
nowhere  marred  by  attempts  at  the 
grandiose  or  pathetic.  It  is  a  delightful 
example  of  the  power  of  sincerity  in  the 
telling  of  a  tale.  Who  can  read  un- 
moved Joseph's  final  words,  when  he  re- 
veals himself  to  his  brothers?  "  I  am 
Joseph:  doth  my  father  yet  live? "  But 
[45] 


THE   PLEASURE    OF 

it  is  all  so  simple,  so  direct  and  so  finely 
inevitable  in  its  simplicity  and  directness. 
The  splendid  imagery  of  Jacob's  fare- 
well words  to  his  sons  is  another  instance 
of  the  wonder-working  literary  art  of 
the  Biblical  writers.  It  is  an  appeal,  a 
benediction,  a  touching  of  spirits  to  fine 
issues,  a  father's  prophetic  insight  into 
his  children's  characters,  and  all  couched 
in  noble  words  nobly  ordered.  It  reads 
like  an  ode  addressed  to  the  founders  of 
a  new  nation: 

*'  Reuben,  thou  art  my  first-bom, 
My  might,  and  the  beginning  of  my  strength; 
The  excellency  of  dignity,  and  the  excellency 

of  power. 

Unstable  as  water,  thou  shalt  not  excel. 
*       *       * 

*'  Simeon  and  Levi  are  brethren; 
Weapons  of  violence  are  their  swords. 
0  my  soul,  come  not  thou  mto  their  council; 
Unto  their  assembly,  my  glory,  be  not  thou 
united; 

[46] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

For  m  their  anger  they  slew  men, 
And  in  their  self -will  houghed  oxen. 
Cursed  be  their  anger,  for  it  was  fierce; 
And  their  wrath,  for  it  was  cruel: 
I  will  divide  them  in  Jacob, 
And  scatter  them  in  Israel. 

"  Judah,  thee  shall  thy  brethren  praise: 
Thy  hand  shall  be  on  the  neck  of  thine  ene- 
mies; 

Thy  father's  sons  shall  bow  down  before  thee. 
Judah  is  a  lion's  whelp; 
From  the  prey,  my  son,  thou  art  gone  up: 
He  stooped  down,  he  couched  as  a  lion. 
And  as  a  lioness;  who  shall  rouse  him  up? 
The  sceptre  shall  not  depart  from  Judah, 
Nor  the  ruler's  staff  from  between  his  feet, 
Till  he  come  to  Shiloh, 
Having  obedience  of  the  peoples. 
Binding  his  foot  unto  the  vine, 
And  his  ass's  colt  unto  the  choice  vine; 
He  hath  washed  his  garments  m  wine, 
And  his  vesture  m  the  blood  of  gr&pes: 
His  eyes  shall  be  red  with  wine, 
And  his  teeth  "white  with  milk." 

From  such  a  stock  were  born  the  tribes 
who  founded  a  new  nation  and  ordered  a 
[47] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

new  commandment.  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  they  did  great  deeds  and  saw  vi- 
sions? Who  shall  dare  hope  to  win 
against  men  who  walk  with  God,  and  see 
their  ideals  in  all  living  things,  and  who 
make  the  ideal  appear  in  the  work  of 
their  hands?  This  was  the  spirit  with 
which  Palestine  was  nationalized;  it  was 
the  spirit  in  which  the  great  mission 
hearers  conquered.  It  is  the  spirit  in 
which  alone  abiding  work  can  be  accom- 
plished. It  is  the  power  that  lies  in  all 
noble  expressions,  and  gives  meaning 
and  value  to  all  literature.  Poets  have 
made  more  heroes  in  the  flesh  than  they 
have  pictured  in  their  language.  That 
is  what  they  are  for — through  noble  lan- 
guage to  attune  hearts  and  inspire  minds 
to  doing  nobly  and  being  noble.  Other- 
wise literature  has  no  place  in  life.  I  go 
back  in  thought  and  find  the  solution  of 
[48] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

England's  greatness  in  the  past  and 
America's  foundation  in  the  present  to 
the  moving  influence  of  this  English 
Bible  on  our  Puritan  forefathers.  It 
was  a  trumpet-blast  calling  on  them  as 
the  hosts  of  the  Lord  to  fight  the  battles 
of  the  Lord;  it  was  a  revelation  of  man's 
equality  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord;  it  was 
a  realization  of  a  living  ideal  by  which 
men  might  come  to  live  in  peace  and  joy 
together;  and  it  was  also  a  glorious  mes- 
sage of  hope. 

"  The  people  that  walked  in  darkness  have 
seen  a  great  light;  they  that  dwelt  m  the  land 
of  the  shadow  of  death,  upon  them  hath  the 
light  shmed." 

The  light  that  shined  on  the  people  of 
England  in  King  James's  and  King 
Charles's  days  came  from  this  Bible. 
Life,  because  of  it,  took  on  new  and 
lovely  colours,  and  men  braced  them- 
[49] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

selves  to  live  it  anew.  What  they  had 
once  dared  as  barons  they  now  dared  as 
yeomen;  and  the  fathers  who  dared 
King  Charles  bred  sons  who  dared  King 
George.  Thus  does  literature  justify 
itself. 

What  must  have  been  in  the  hearts  of 
the  children  of  Israel  as  they  listened  to 
Moses'  song,  on  the  eve  of  his  death, 
when  in  sight  of  the  Promised  Land? 

"  Give  ear,  ye  "heavens,  and  I  will  speak; 
And  let  the  earth  hear  the  words  of  my  mouth: 
My  doctrine  shall  drop  as  the  ram, 
My  speech  shall  distil  as  the  dew; 
As  the  small  rain  upon  the  tender  grass, 
And  as  the  showers  upon  the  herb: 
For  I  will  proclaim  the  name  of  the  Lord. 

"  Tor  all  his  ways  are  judgement: 
A  God  of  faithfulness  and  without  iniquity, 
Just  and  right  is  He." 

Do  these  same  children  of  Israel  hear 
[50] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

these  words  now?  Does  their  music  make 
glad  their  spirits?  Surely,  if  words  mean 
anything,  these  words  mean  the  same  to- 
day that  they  meant  thousands  of  years 
ago!  God  is  still  a  God  of  faithfulness, 
if  we  remain  true  to  our  ideal.  He  is  still 
without  iniquity,  if  we  keep  our  own  na- 
tures clean.  He  remains  just  and  right, 
so  long  as  we  live  justly  and  rightly, 
each  to  the  other.  But  we  have  missed 
the  pleasure  of  reading  this  Bible,  and 
no  longer  hear  its  inspiring  music.  I 
must  believe  that  we  have  misunderstood 
this  wonderful  book;  that  we  have  al- 
lowed ourselves  to  be  led  astray  and  so 
lost  the  sense  for  pure  enjoyment.  If 
we  have  read  the  letter  we  have  been  alto- 
gether blind  to  the  spirit — the  spirit  of 
Beauty,  which  is  in  the  Bible  as  it  is  in 
the  Iliad,  as  it  is  in  the  Divine  Comedy, 
as  it  is  in  Shakespeare,  in  Milton,  in 
[51] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

Keats,  in  Wordsworth,  and  in  all  great 
manifestations  of  literary  art. 

The  conforming  Jew  reads  the  Psalms 
every  Sabbath  day,  until  he  has  learned 
them  by  rote.  They  appear  in  his  daily 
prayers  and  reappear  in  the  devotional 
exercises  on  festival  and  fast  days.  He 
can  chant  them  by  number,  and  recite 
them  at  command.  Has  he  accomplished 
more  than  a  feat  of  the  memory?  Has 
the  poet's  music  stirred  his  soul  to  finer 
impulses  through  purer  pleasure?  Let 
his  life  answer  the  questions.  But  the 
same  questions  may  be  asked  of  the 
Christian  also.  The  truth  is  we  have 
spoiled  our  taste  for  this  splendid  litera- 
ture by  making  its  reading  a  task  instead 
of  a  life-giving  delight.  When  the  child 
at  school  is  compelled  to  learn  by  rote 
Wordsworth's  Lucy  Gray,  or  Shelley's 
Ode  to  a  Skylark,  or  Keats's  Ode 
[52] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

to  a  Nightingale,  or  a  hundred  lines 
from  Goldsmith's  Deserted  Village, 
the  child  cannot  possibly  see  the  reveal- 
ing beauty  in  these  poems.  Its  mind  is 
centered  on  quite  a  different  object,  the 
object  of  accomplishing  an  ordered  ex- 
ercise. For  the  child  to  see  beauty  it 
must  come  on  beauty,  so  to  speak. 
Beauty  must  startle  it  into  an  awareness 
of  something  strange  in  its  experience. 
Then  will  the  child's  curious  soul  be 
drawn  to  the  revelation,  and  it  will  never- 
more forget  the  meeting.  In  exactly  the 
same  way  all  great  literature  must  be  ap- 
proached— gently  led  to  delightful  sur- 
prises. If  the  mood  be  not  upon  us  it  is 
wiser  to  leave  the  reading  alone.  "  Soft 
stillness  and  the  night  become  the  touches 
of  sweet  harmony."  Let  the  right  at- 
mosphere be  made  and  the  right  mood 
realized  before  you  listen  to  the  poet's 
[53] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

songs.  Then  will  such  a  psalm  as  the 
nineteenth  lift  your  spirit  on  self -born 
wings: 

"  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God; 
And  the  -firmament  showeth  his  handiwork. 
Day  unto  day  uttereth  speech, 
And  night  wnto  night  showeth  knowledge. 
There  is  no  speech  nor  language; 
Their  voice  is  not  heard. 

"  Their  line  is  gone  out  through  all  the  earth. 
And  their  words  to  the  end  of  the  world. 
In  them  hath  he  set  a  tabernacle  for  the  sun, 
Which  is  as  a  bridegroom  coming  out  of  his 

chamber, 
And  rejoiceth  as  a  strong  man  to  run  his 

course. 
'His   going   forth   is   from   the   end   of   the 

heavens, 

And  his  circuit  unto  the  ends  of  it; 
And   there   is   nothing   hid   from   the   heat 

thereof. 

"  The  law  of  the  Lord  is  perfect,  restoring  the 

soul; 

The  testimony  of  the  Lord  is  sure,  making 
wise  the  simple. 

[54] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

The  precepts  of  the  Lord  are  right,  rejoicing 
the  heart: 

The  commandment  of  the  Lord  is  pure,  en- 
lightening the  eyes: 

The  fear  of  the  Lord  is  clean,  enduring  for- 
ever: 

The  ordinances  of  the  Lord  are  true,  and 
righteous  altogether. 

"  M ore  to  be  desired  are  they  than  gold,  yea, 

than  much  fine  gold; 

Sweeter  also  than  honey  and  the  droppings  of 
the  honeycomb." 

Or  this  exquisite  confession  of  God's 
protective  influence,  as  embodied  in  the 
twenty-third  Psalm: 

"  The  Lord  is  my  shepherd;  I  shall  not  "want. 
He  maketh  me  to  lie  down  in  green  pastures; 
He  leadeth  me  beside  the  still  waters. 
He  restoreth  my  soul: 

He  guideth  me  in  the  paths  of  righteousness 
for  his  name's  sake. 

**  Yea,  though  1  walk  through,  the  valley  of  the 
shadow  of  death, 

[55] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

I  "will  fear  no  evil;  for  thou  art  with  me; 
Thy  rod  and  thy  staff,  they  comfort  me. 

"  Thou  preparest  a  table  before  me  in  the  pres- 
ence of  mine  enemies; 

Thou  hast  anointed  my  head  with  oft; 

My  cup  runneth  over. 

Surely  goodness  and  lovmg-Jcindness  shall 
follow  me  all  the  days  of  my  life; 

And  I  shall  dwell  in  the  house  of  the  Lord 
for  ever." 

The  poetry  of  devotion  must  be  gently 
dealt  with,  otherwise  we  are  in  danger  of 
adulterating  its  fine  aroma.  The  poet's 
mood  must  be  our  mood,  or  we  shall  alto- 
gether miss  the  music.  The  hour  that 
fits  Burns's  The  Jolly  Beggars  is  not 
the  hour  for  Tennyson's  In  Memo- 
riam,  and  the  mood  meet  for  the  story 
of  Samson  and  Delilah  shuns  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount.  The  Bible  must  be 
treated  fairly,  as  we  would  any  other 
work  of  accepted  literature.  One  need 
not  read  at  all  if  the  ear  be  not  inclined. 
[56] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

If  the  singing  of  songs  is  the  natural 
demand,  then  sing  songs.  We  are  no 
longer  children  to  do  this  or  that  at  a 
bidding.  It  were  well  that  children  were 
also  dealt  with  in  a  proper  fashion.  It 
is  unseemly  to  force  or  be  forced,  and 
unjust  to  your  author.  When  we  shall 
have  learned  to  be  less  familiar  and  more 
courteous  to  the  Bible  we  shall  not  only 
value  it  with  livelier  discrimination,  but 
the  book  itself  will  yield  to  us,  more  and 
more  benignantly,  the  fine  enjoyment 
of  its  beauty. 

Rich  as  the  Bible  is  in  poetry  of  de- 
votion, it  is  as  rich  in  lyrical  poetry.  The 
Book  of  Psalms  is  full  of  lyrics,  and  the 
Song  of  Solomon  is  an  entire  series  of 
love  lyrics.  These  latter  are  exquisitely 
beautiful : 

'*  /  am  a  rose  of  Sharon, 
A  lily  of  the  valleys. 

*        »        • 
[57] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

!  As  the  apple-tree  among  the  trees  of  the  wood, 
So  is  my  beloved  among  the  sons. 
I  sat  down  under  the  shadow  with  great  de- 
light, 

And  his  fruit  was  sweet  to  my  taste. 
He  brought  me  to  the  banqueting  house, 
And  his  banner  over  me  was  love. 

Stay  ye  me  with   raisins,   refresh   me  with 

apples; 

For  I  am  sick  from  love. 
Let  his  left  hand  be  under  my  head, 
And  his  right  hand  embrace  me. 


"  The  voice  of  my  beloved!  behold,  he  cometh, 
Leaping  upon  the  mountains, 
Skipping  upon  the  hills. 
My  beloved  is  like  a  roe  or  a  young  hart: 
Behold,  he  standeth  behind  our  wall; 
He  looketh  m  at  the  windows; 
He  glanceth  through  the  lattice. 
My  beloved  spake  and  said  unto  me, 
Arise  up,  my  love,  my  fair  one,  and  come 
away. 

*'  For,  lo,  the  winter  is  past; 
The  ram  is  over  and  gone; 

[58] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

The  flowers  appear  on  the  earth; 

The  time  of  the  singing1  of  birds  is  come, 

And  the  voice  of  the  turtle  is  heard  m  our 

land; 

The  -jig-tree  ripeneth  her  green  figs, 
And  the  vines  are  m  blossom; 
They  give  forth  their  fragrance. 
Arise,  my  love,  my  fair  one,  and  come  away." 

These  songs  of  love  between  a  husband 
and  wife  must  be  read  in  their  complete 
sequence  to  enjoy  their  pulsating  melody. 
Whatever  secondary  interpretation  the 
criticism  of  theologians  may  offer  by 
way  of  explanation,  the  poems  must  con- 
tinue to  appeal  because  of  the  response 
they  find  in  every  true  lover's  heart. 
"  Many  waters  cannot  quench  love, 
neither  can  floods  drown  it." 

The  writers  of  the  Bible  possessed  a 
gift  which  few  modern  writers  possess; 
they  had  the  power  to  express  the  phi- 
losophy of  life  as  literature.  The  Book 
[59] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

of  Job  is  a  masterly  dramatic  allegory, 
the  language  of  which  rises  to  the  highest 
form  of  poetical  expression.  The  Prov- 
erhs  of  Solomon  may  be  arranged,  as 
Professor  Moulton  has  arranged  them,  so 
that  they  form  sonnets.  He  has  also  di- 
vided the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes  into  es- 
says, epigrams,  sonnets,  and  "  wisdom 
clusters."  But  the  Book  of  Job  stands 
supreme,  among  its  kind,  in  all  literature. 
We  shall  best  accept  it  as  the  poetic  trag- 
edy of  a  noble  mind  struggling  to  find  a 
reasonable  basis  for  faith  in  God's  divine 
judgments  and  finding  peace  at  last  in 
a  realization  that  faith  is  better  than 
knowledge  and  is  the  profoundest  wis- 
dom the  human  soul  can  attain. 

Job  had  been  a  wealthy  man.     He 

feared  God  and  walked  in  the  ways  of 

righteousness.     Suddenly,  in  one  single 

day,  ruin  came  upon  him.     He  lost  his 

[60] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

flocks,  his  camels,  his  home  and  his  fam- 
ily. He  barely  had  time  to  realize  the 
calamities  that  had  befallen  him  when  he 
himself  was  afflicted  by  a  loathsome  dis- 
ease. He  became  an  outcast  and  a 
dweller  with  the  dogs  on  the  village  ash- 
mound.  As  he  lived  there  wondering 
why  God  had  thus  punished  him,  his 
friends  came  to  argue  with  him  by  way 
of  explaining  the  reason  for  his  afflic- 
tions. Each,  according  to  his  point  of 
view,  tells  him  that  sin  is  the  cause  of  all 
misfortune  in  life,  and  that  he  must  have 
sinned  grievously  to  be  thus  visited  by 
God's  anger.  Job  cannot  understand 
this.  He  never  believed  he  was  a  per- 
fect man;  but  if  God  is  all-powerful, 
why  does  he  not  pardon  his  sin,  so  that 
he  may  pass  into  "  the  land  of  darkness 
and  of  the  shadow  of  death  "  with  some 
little  of  comfort  to  himself?  One  of 
[61] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

his  friends  thereupon  asks  him:  "  Canst 
thou  by  searching  find  out  God?  Canst 
thou  find  out  the  Almighty  unto  perfec- 
tion?" And  he  advises  him  to  be  good 
and  of  faith  in  God: 

"  If  thou  set  thine  heart  aright, 

And  stretch  out  thme  hands  toward  Him; 

If  iniquity  be  in  thine  hand,  put  it  far  away, 

And  let  no  unrighteousness  dwell  in  thy  tents; 

Surely  then  shalt  thou  lift  up  thy  face  with- 
out spot; 

Yea,  thou  shalt  be  steadfast,  and  shalt  not 
fear." 

Job  answers :  "  No  doubt  but  ye  are  the 
people,  and  wisdom  shall  die  with  you. 
But  I  have  understanding  as  well  as  you ; 
I  am  not  inferior  to  you  .  .  .  The 
tents  of  the  robbers  prosper,  and  they 
that  provoke  God  are  secure.  Why  does 
God  permit  these  things?  Why  should 
evil  succeed  and  good  be  punished? "  He 
[62] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

tries  to  find  the  meaning  in  this  seeming 
paradox,  and  is  driven  along  two  lines  of 
thought.  Either  God's  world  is  void  of 
meaning,  a  world  in  which  evil  must  tri- 
umph ;  or  it  may  be  that  all  things  will  be 
righted  in  a  world  to  come,  in  a  future 
life.  Either  way,  however,  does  not  com- 
fort Job,  because  he  is  consumed  by  a  pas- 
sionate desire  to  vindicate  himself  now, 
while  he  is  yet  in  the  flesh,  before  the  peo- 
ple he  knew  in  the  days  of  his  prosperity 
who  have  falsely  interpreted  the  cause  of 
his  degradation.  In  a  series  of  remark- 
ably dramatic  speeches  the  argument  is 
taken  up  by  each  of  the  actors  in  turn, 
until  God  Himself,  as  a  Voice  out  of  the 
whirlwind,  interrupts  the  speakers  and, 
in  a  poem  of  magnificent  grandeur,  hum- 
bles Job  to  the  very  dust.  Then  does 
Job  realize  that  true  wisdom  is  not  to  be 
found  in  knowledge  but  in  faith.  When 
[63] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

he  has  realized  this  in  its  fulness  he  is 
able  to  say,  "  Though  he  slay  me,  yet  will 
I  trust  him."  But  he  comes  to  this  wis- 
dom only  after  he  has  been  shown  that 
the  mystery  of  evil  is  but  the  least  of  the 
mysteries  of  the  universe.  The  Divine 
argument  is  so  wonderfully  embodied 
that  Job  is  overwhelmed,  and  can  but 
brokenly  cry:  "  I  know  that  thou  canst 
do  all  things,  and  that  no  purpose  of 
thine  can  be  restrained  .  .  .  There- 
fore have  I  uttered  that  which  I  under- 
stood not,  things  too  wonderful  for  me, 
which  I  knew  not.  Hear,  I  beseech  thee, 
and  I  will  speak  ...  I  had  heard  of 
thee  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear;  but  now 
mine  eye  seeth  thee:  wherefore,  I  abhor 
myself,  and  repent  in  dust  and  ashes." 

Here  is  a  portion  of  the  Divine  Argu- 
ment by  which  God  revealed  Himself  to 
Job  and  brought  him  to  a  sense  of  the 
[64] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

profound  and  purifying  humility  of  ig- 
norance that  leads  him  to  faith: 

"  Where  wast  thou  when  I  laid  the  foundations 

of  the  earth? 

Declare,  if  thou  hast  understanding, 
Who  determined  the  measures  thereof,  if  thou 

knowest? 

Or  who  stretched  the  line  upon  it? 
Whereupon    were    the    foundations    thereof 

fastened? 

Or  who  laid  the  cornerstone  thereof, 
When  the  morning  stars  sang  together, 
And  all  the  sons  of  God  shouted  for 


Or  who  shut  up  the  sea  with  doors, 

When  it  brake  forth,  as  if  newly  born; 

When  I  made  clouds  the  garment  thereof, 

And  thick  darkness  a  swaddling-band  for  it, 

And  marked  out  for  it  my  bound, 

And  set  bars  and  doors, 

And  said,  Hitherto  shalt  thou  come,  but  no 

further; 
And  here  shall  thy  proud  waves  be  stayed? 

Hast  thou  commanded  the  morning  since  thy 

days  began, 
And  caused  the  dayspring  to  know  its  place? 

[65] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

Hast  thou  entered  into  the  springs  of  the  sea? 
Or  hast  thou  walked  m  the  recesses  of  the 

deep? 
Have  the  portals  of  the  grave  been  revealed 

unto  thee? 
Or  hast  thou  seen  the  gates  of  the  shadow  of 

death? 
Hast    thou  comprehended   the   earth   in   its 

breadth? 
Declare,  if  thou  knowest  it  all! 

"  Where  is  the  way  to  the  dwelling  place  of 

light? 
rAnd   as   for   darkness,   where   is    the   place 

thereof, 
That  thou  shouldest  take  it  to  the  bound 

thereof, 
TAnd  that  thou  shouldest  discern  the  paths  to 

the  house  thereof? 
Doubtless  thou  knowest,  for  thou  wast  then 

born, 
And  the  number  of  thy  days  is  great! 

"  Canst  thou  bind  the  cluster  of  the  Pleiades, 
Or  loose  the  bands  of  Orion? 
Canst  thou  lead  forth  the  signs  of  the  Zodiac 

m  their  season? 
Or  canst  thou  guide  the  Bear  with  her  train? 

[66] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

Knowest  thou  the  ordinances  of  the  heavens? 
Canst  thou  establish  the  dominion  thereof  in 
the  earth?  " 

Well,  indeed,  may  Job  have  exclaimed: 
;*  What  shall  I  answer  thee?  I  lay  mine 
hand  upon  my  mouth."  The  argument 
is  a  sublime  poem  of  a  mighty  execution. 
The  creative  genius  of  this  poet  has  here 
never  been  surpassed.  He  may  worthily 
take  his  place  by  the  side  of  Homer, 
Dante  and  Milton.  But  the  whole  book 
is,  indeed,  one  of  the  marvels  of  litera- 
ture. 

In  Ecclesiasticus,  one  of  the  so-called 
Apocryphal  books  of  the  Bible,  there  is 
a  little  essay  on  Friendship  which  de- 
serves re-setting,  even  though  the  sub- 
ject has  been  dealt  with  by  many  writers 
since,  from  Bacon  downwards. 

"  Sweet  words,"  says  this  counsellor, 
"  will  multiply  a  man's  friends ;  and  a 
[67] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

fair-speaking  tongue  will  multiply  cour- 
tesies. Let  those  that  are  at  peace  with 
thee  be  many;  but  thy  counsellors  one  of 
a  thousand.  If  thou  wouldest  get  thee 
a  friend,  get  him  by  proving,  and  be  not 
in  haste  to  trust  him.  For  there  is  a 
friend  that  is  so  for  his  own  occasion,  and 
he  will  not  continue  in  the  day  of  thy 
affliction.  And  there  is  a  friend  that 
turneth  to  enmity;  and  he  will  discover 
strife  to  thy  reproach.  And  there  is  a 
friend  that  is  a  companion  at  the  table, 
and  he  will  not  continue  in  the  day  of  thy 
affliction;  and  in  thy  prosperity  he  will 
be  as  thyself,  and  will  be  bold  over  thy 
servants;  if  thou  shalt  be  brought  low, 
he  will  be  against  thee,  and  he  will  hide 
himself  from  thy  face.  Separate  thyself 
from  thine  enemies;  and  beware  of  thy 
friends.  A  faithful  friend  is  a  strong 
defence;  and  he  that  hath  found  him 
[68] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

hath  found  a  treasure.  There  is  nothing 
that  can  be  taken  in  exchange  for  a  faith- 
ful friend;  and  his  excellency  is  beyond 
price.  A  faithful  friend  is  a  medicine  of 
life;  and  they  that  fear  the  Lord  shall 
find  him.  He  that  feareth  the  Lord  di- 
recteth  his  friendship  aright ;  for  as  he  is, 
so  is  his  neighbour  also." 

From  Ecclesiastes  I  take  the  liberty 
to  quote,  in  Professor  Moulton's  set- 
ting, a  portion  of  the  twelfth  chapter, 
which  he  entitles,  "  The  Coming  of  Evil 
Days":— 

"  Remember  also  thy  Creator  m  the  days  of 

thy  youth! 

Or  ever  the  evil  days  come, 
And  the  years  draw  nigh, 

When  thou  shalt  say,  I  have  no  pleas- 
ure m  them: 

"  Or  ever  the  sun, 

And  the  light, 
And  the  moon, 

[69] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

And  the  stars, 
Be  darkened, 
And  the  clouds  return  after  the  ram: 

"  In  the  days  when  the  keepers  of  the  house 

shall  tremble, 

And  the  strong  men  shall  bow  themselves, 
And  the  grinders  cease  because  they  are  few, 
And  those  that  look  out  of  the  windows  be 

darkened, 
And  the  door  shall  be  shut  m  the  street; 

"  When  the  sound  of  the  grinding  is  low, 
And  one  shall  rise  up  at  the  voice  of  a  bird; 
And   all   the   daughters   of   music    shall   be 
brought  low; 

"  Yea,  they  shall  be  afraid  of  that  which  is 

high, 
And  terrors  shall  be  m  the  way; 

"  And  the  almond  tree  shall  blossom, 
And  the  grasshopper  shall  be  a  burden, 
And  the  caperberry  shall  burst: 

"  Because  man  goeth  to  his  long  home, 
And  the  mourners  go  about  the  streets: 

[70] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

"  Or  ever  the  silver  cord  be  loosed, 
Or  the  golden  bowl  be  broken, 
Or  the  pitcher  be  broken  at  the  fountain, 
Or  the  wheel  broken  at  the  cistern: 

"  And  the  dust  return  to  the  earth, 

As  it  was; 

And  the  spirit  return  unto  God 
Who  gave  it." 

The  Preacher  prefixes  this  beautifully 
sombre  poem  with  a  short  exhortation 
written  in  prose  as  beautiful,  and  reveal- 
ing his  kindly  and  sweet  sympathy  for 
the  frailty  of  human  nature  and  the 
evanescence  of  human  life : 

"  Truly  the  light  is  sweet,  and  a  pleasant 
thing  it  is  for  the  eyes  to  behold  the  sun.  Yea, 
if  a  man  live  many  years,  let  him  rejoice  in  them 
all;  and  remember  the  days  of  darkness,  for 
they  shall  be  many.  All  that  cometh  is  vanity. 
Rejoice,  O  young  man,  in  thy  youth,  and  walk 
in  the  ways  of  thine  heart,  and  in  the  sight  of 
thine  eyes:  but  know  then,  that  for  all  these 
things  God  will  bring  thee  into  judgement. 
Therefore  remove  sorrow  from  thy  heart,  and 

[71] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

put  away  evil  from  thy  -flesh:  for  youth  and 
the  prime  of  life  are  vanity." 

But  this  tone  is  not  the  prevailing  tone 
of  the  Bible,  which  is  one  of  splendid  op- 
timism. Only  serve  the  Lord  and  it  shall 
be  well  with  you — that  is  the  keynote  of 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures ;  it  is  also  its  prac- 
tical value  for  life.  Even  Isaiah  rejoices 
in  this  truth: 

'*  How  beautiful  upon  the  mountains  are  the 

feet  of  him 
That  bringeth  good  tidings,  that  publisheth 

peace, 
That   bringeth  good   tidings   of  good,    that 

publisheth  salvation: 
That  saith  unto  Zion,  Thy  God  reigneth." 

That  is  the  secret  revealed.  Every- 
thing is  beautiful,  everything  is  right, 
everything  is  good,  because  God  reigneth. 
From  this  fountain  did  Browning  drink 

[72] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

his  joyous  faith:  "  God's  in  His  heaven. 
All's  right  with  the  world." 

The  lasting  appeal  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment is  made  as  the  Gospel  of  Love. 
That  is  the  revelation  it  brought  to  man- 
kind; and  it  has  been  embodied  largely, 
not  in  poetry,  but  in  prose.  The  prose, 
however,  is  of  so  excellent  a  quality  that 
its  words  have  passed  into  our  current 
speech;  so  that  if  we  use  them  even  care- 
lessly they  have  yet  an  arresting  power  to 
make  us  pause  and  give  us  thought.  The 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  the  thirteenth 
chapter  of  the  first  epistle  to  the  Corin- 
thians are  together  the  finest  flowers  of 
speech  containing  this  gospel.  The  ser- 
mon, however,  is  expressed  in  the  lan- 
guage as  of  one  in  authority;  the  epistle 
is  argumentative  and  persuasive.  Christ 
spoke  to  eager  listeners;  Paul  wrote  to 
cultured  thinkers.  Yet  when  Paul  comes 
[73] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

to  the  subject  of  love  he  rises  to  finely 
moving  eloquence: 

"  If  I  speak  with  the  tongue  of  men  and 
angels"  he  says,  "  but  have  not  love,  I  am  be- 
come sounding  brass,  or  a  clanging  cymbal. 
And  if  I  have  the  gift  of  prophecy,  and  know 
all  mysteries  and  all  knowledge,  and  if  I  have 
all  faith,  so  as  to  remove  mountains,  but  have 
not  love,  I  am  nothing.  And  if  I  bestow  all  my 
goods  to  feed  the  poor,  and  if  I  give  my  body 
to  be  burned,  and  have  not  love,  it  profiteth  me 
nothing.  Love  suffereth  long,  and  is  kind; 
love  envieth  not;  love  vaunteth  not  itself,  is  not 
puffed  up,  doth  not  behave  itself  unseemly, 
seeketh  not  its  own,  is  not  provoked,  taketh  not 
account  of  evil;  rejoiceth  not  in  unrighteous- 
ness, but  rejoiceth  with  the  truth;  beareth  all 
things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things, 
endureth  all  things.  Love  never  faileth:  but 
whether  there  be  prophecies,  they  shall  be  done 
away;  whether  there  be  tongues,  they  shall 
cease;  whether  there  be  knowledge,  it  shall  be 
done  away.  For  we  know  in  part,  and  we 
prophesy  in  part:  but  when  that  which  is  per- 
fect is  come,  that  which  is  in  part  shall  be  done 
away.  When  I  was  a  child  I  spoke  as  a  child, 

[74] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

I  felt  as  a  child,  I  thought  as  a  child:  now  that 
I  am  become  a  man,  I  have  put  away  childish 
things.  For  now  we  see  m  a  mirror  darkly; 
but  then  face  to  face:  now  I  know  in  part;  but 
then  I  shall  know  even  also  as  I  have  been 
known.  But  now  abideth  faith,  hope,  love, 
these  three;  and  the  greatest  of  these  is  love." 


It  is  not  possible  to  read  this  language 
senseless  to  the  power  of  words.  The 
magical  art  of  the  writer  is  almost  a  piece 
of  wizardry.  He  rings  the  changes  on 
the  word,  turning  it  this  way  and  that 
way,  until  the  mind  of  the  reader  has  ex- 
hausted its  own  experiences  in  following 
the  writer's  argument.  And  after  the 
kaleidoscope  has  been  turned  in  every  di- 
rection, the  final  appeal  is  made  to  the 
personal  emotion ;  but  so  deftly  made  that 
the  reader  is  not  conscious  of  having  been 
led  to  a  conviction,  but  believes  he  has 
brought  himself  to  it.  And  yet  the  con- 
[75] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

viction  would  be  worth  little  were  there 
no  response  in  the  reader's  heart  to  the 
truth;  were  there  no  possibility  of  the  re- 
lation between  him  and  the  ideal  pre- 
sented to  him.  It  is  because  of  this  pos- 
sibility that  Paul's  epistle  will  be  read  so 
long  as  men  shall  walk  the  earth.  It  be- 
longs, with  the  rest  of  the  Bible,  to  that 
body  of  work  of  the  creative  imagination 
which  in  song,  oration,  romance  and  story, 
has  attempted  to  spell  the  experiences  of 
life  in  the  language  of  beauty,  and  given 
to  striving  and  travailing  men  and  women 
a  joyous  hope  in  each  to-morrow  in  the 
happiness  of  each  to-day.  For  literature 
is  less  than  life;  it  is  not  our  master,  but 
our  servant.  The  gods  well  know  how 
profoundly  and  pathetically  we  still  need 
the  help. 

I  have  tried,  in  as  few  words  as  I  could 
express  it,  to  show  that  the  Bible,  taking 
[76] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

it  as  literature  only,  may  be  read  for  the 
pleasure  it  affords.  I  have  tried  to  em- 
phasize fruitfully  the  purity  of  that 
pleasure,  leading  as  it  does,  to  the  culti- 
vation of  our  sense  of  beauty  in  lan- 
guage and  thought;  and  to  an  awareness 
of  beauty  in  all  things.  I  have  done  this, 
in  the  first  place,  because  I  believe  there 
is  no  one  book,  in  all  the  literatures 
of  the  world,  that  so  amply  and  so 
bravely  searches  all  that  can  affect  our 
minds  and  hearts.  It  is  a  panorama  of 
life  in  action,  of  the  struggle  of  man 
against  nature  and  himself  and  of  his 
reconciliation  with  nature  and  himself; 
it  is  a  pageant  of  the  progress  of  peoples 
to  the  making  of  nations ;  it  is  a  body  of 
poetry  and  prose  singing  of  the  joy  of 
living  for  life's  sake,  and  the  joy  of  lov- 
ing for  all  sakes.  It  is,  finally,  the  rec- 
ord in  imperishable  speech  of  the  dis- 
[77] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

covery   of  how   man  redeemed   himself 
by  achieving  an  ideal. 

In  the  second  place,  it  has  seemed  to 
me  proper  to  do  this,  in  order  that  I 
might  help  to  reinstate  the  Bible  in  its 
rightful  place.  It  has  too  long  been  al- 
lowed to  rest,  in  lordly  isolation,  to  be 
guarded  by  augurs  from  the  common 
touch,  as  if  it  required  interpreters  to  ex- 
plain its  hidden  secrets.  The  Bible  will 
never  be  known  after  this  fashion. 
There  are  no  secrets  in  it  that  any  true 
heart  cannot  know.  There  is  nothing  to 
explain.  It  is  a  book  to  take  by  the  hand; 
to  turn  to  in  hours  of  joy;  to  look  to  in 
times  of  sorrow;  and  to  accept  at  all 
times  as  the  sincere  efforts  of  men  and 
women  like  ourselves  toward  perfection. 
Above  all,  it  is  a  book  to  be  happy  with. 

'*  Behold,  I  stand  at  the  door  and  knock:  if 
any  man  hear  my  voice  and  open  the  door,  I 

[78] 


READING   THE   BIBLE 

will  come  in  to  him,  and  mil  sup  with  him,  and 
he  with  me.  I  am  the  Alpha  and  the  Omega, 
the  beginning  and  the  end.  I  will  give  unto 
him  that  is  athirst  of  the  fountain  of  the  water 
of  life  freely.  And  the  Spirit  and  the  bride 
say,  Come.  And  he  that  heareth,  let  him  say, 
Come.  And  he  that  is  athirst,  let  him  come: 
and  whosoever  will,  let  him  take  the  water  of 
life  freely." 


[79] 


Ill 

THE      PLEASURE OE 
READING  POETRY 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 
POETRY 


T  has  always  seemed  to  me 
strange  that  poetry  should  re- 
quire an  introduction  to  its  en- 
joyment; that  any  "  defence  "  or  "  apol- 
ogy "  should  be  made  for  it;  or  that  any 
guide  should  be  necessary  to  its  "  knowl- 
edge." Poetry  is  not  an  object  for 
knowledge;  it  is  really  a  personal  ex- 
perience, a  necessary  condition  of  the 
soul  toward  growth  that  comes  to  us  at 
certain  moments  without  any  conscious 
effort  on  our  part,  but  that  may  be 
aroused  in  us  by  reading  a  poem.  How 
or  why  this  is  so  is  a  mystery.  The  fact, 
however,  remains  that  the  appeal  poetry 
makes  is  universal,  immediate,  and  does 
[83] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

not  depend  for  appreciation  on  infor- 
mation to  be  obtained  from  instructors 
or  guides. 

A  poem  is  when,  in  reading  it,  we  are 
en  rapport  with  it.  If  there  arise  no  re- 
sponse in  us  to  what  it  is,  then  for  us,  it 
is  not.  Yet,  like  the 

"  barred  clouds  that  bloom  the  dymg  day,'1 
it  is  still  there.  It  is  we  who  are,  for  the 
moment,  either  blind  or  without  the 
sense  to  experience  it.  I  must  then  be- 
lieve, since,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
guide  is  found  to  be  necesary,  that  his 
business  is  not  so  much  to  point  out  what 
particular  poetry  gives  most  pleasure,  as 
what  in  us  requires  cultivation  in  order 
to  experience  the  pleasure  to  be  obtained 
from  any  poem. 

Now  this  is  not  very  easy  to  do;  nor 
would  it  be  very  exciting  to  read  when 
done.     Were  I  even  competent  for  the 
[84] 


READING  POETRY 

task  the  result,  I  am  afraid,  might  not 
accomplish  the  purpose  I  have  in  mind. 
The  reader  would  be  wearied  in  an  in- 
tricacy of  psychological  analyses  which 
would  not  greatly  enlighten  him,  nor 
would  it  much  help  him  to  the  enjoyment 
of  poetry. 

It  is  possible,  of  course,  by  enquiring 
into  the  nature  of  poetry,  into  its  so- 
called  meaning  and  value,  to  build  up,  so 
to  speak,  that  condition  of  the  mind 
which  is  favourable  to  poetic  experience. 
In  this  way,  we  might  come  to  discover 
hidden  virtues  in  ourselves  and,  there- 
fore, hidden  beauties  in  the  poems;  and, 
perhaps,  find  that  our  blindness  and  lack 
of  sense  were  only  seeming  or  momen- 
tary, and  that  poetry  is  itself  a  revealing 
and  sensing  power.  But  along  this  road 
also  we  may  meet  Professor  Dryasdust, 
and  he  is  not  a  very  interesting  compan- 
[85] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

ion,  if  we  are  intending  to  travel  with 
those  who  say  of  themselves: 

"  We  are  the  music  makers, 

And  we  are  the  dreamers  of  dreams , 
Wandering  by  lone  sea-breakers, 

And  sitting  by  desolate  streams; — 
World-lovers  and  world-forsakers, 

On  whom  the  pale  moon  gleams: 
Yet  we  are  the  movers  and  shakers 

Of  the  world  for  ever,  it  seems. 

'*  With  wonderful  deathless  ditties 
We  build  up  the  world's  great  cities, 

And  out  of  the  fabulous  story 

We  fashion  an  empire's  glory: 
One  man,  with  a  dream,  at  pleasure, 

Shall  go  forth  and  conquer  a  crown: 
And  three  with  a  new  song's  measure 

Can  trample  a  kingdom  down. 

"  We,  in  the  ages  lying 

In  the  buried  past  of  the  earth, 
Built  Nineveh  with  our  sighing, 

And  Babel  itself  m  our  mirth; 
And  overthrew  them  with  prophesying 

To  the  old  of  the  new  world's  worth; 
For  each  age  is  a  dream  that  is  dying, 

Or  one  that  is  coming  to  birth." 

[86] 


READING   POETRY 

These  are  daring,  reckless  fellows  who 
are  apt  to  fling  friend  Dryasdust  into 
the  nearest  wayside  ditch;  and  we  our- 
selves might  catch  their  infectious  spirits 
and  do  things  that  are  not  seemly  on  the 
highroad  of  a  law-abiding  land. 

Perhaps  we  shall  do  as  well  if  we  set 
no  definite  course,  but  let  the  subject  it- 
self take  us  where  it  will.  If  the  high- 
road call  us,  let  us  take  to  it,  but  let  us 
not  feel  obliged  to  keep  to  it  if  we  find 
ourselves  drawn  to  the  by-lanes  and 
grassy  foot-paths  that  lead  nowhere  in 
particular,  and  may  perhaps  leave  us 
listening  to  a  brook,  murmuring  "  un- 
der moon  and  stars  in  brambly  wilder- 
nesses." 

The  pleasure  of  reading  poetry  may 

not  be  tapped  at  will.     If  it  come  not 

now,  it  may  come  then.     The  habit  of 

reading    poetry,    however,    may    be    so 

[87] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

gently  encouraged  and  trained  that  the 
pleasure  may  be  ours  more  and  more 
frequently: 

"  Ever  let  the  Fancy  roam, 
Pleasure  never  is  at  home: 
At  a  touch  sweet  Pleasure  melteth, 
Like  to  bubbles  when  rain  pelteth." 

The  poet  also,  if  he  be  worthy  the 
name,  has  not  sung  "by  precept  only," 
or  "  shed  tears  by  rule."  He  has  quaffed 
"  the  live  current."  He  has  grown  to 
the  power  of  his  accomplished  singing, 
even  as  the  meadow-flower  grew  to  the 
unfolding  of  its  bloom — in  freedom 
bold: 

"  And  so  the  grandeur  of  the  Forest-tree 

Comes  not  by  casting  in  a  formal  mould, 
But  from  its  own  divine  vitality." 

This  is  Wordsworth's  poet,  the  man 
who  is  able  to  sing  so  that  his  songs 
shall  be  to  us  "  a  substantial  world  both 
[88] 


READING   POETRY 

pure  and  good."  If  then  we  are  to  know 
the  pleasure  poetry  affords  we  must 
search  the  literatures  and  find  out  who 
are  the  poets  and  what  of  their  poetry 
best  fulfils  their  high  moods.  This,  per- 
haps, leads  us  to  the  purposes  of  this 
chapter,  which  are  to  name  by  name 
"  the  great  music-makers,"  "  the  dream- 
ers of  dreams,"  "  the  world-lovers  and 
world- forsakers,"  and  to  taste  the  purity 
and  beauty  of  their  work  in  its  power  to 
make  pure  our  own  impulses  and  to  un- 
fold our  own  sense  for  beauty.  If  po- 
etry have  a  "  meaning  "  and  the  poet  a 
"  value,"  both  meaning  and  value  are  to 
be  precipitated  by  our  consideration  of 
the  man  and  his  work. 

Before   naming   these   master-workers 

let  us,  for  a  moment,  consider  what  the 

poet  is,  and  how  we  may  recognize  his 

work  as  poetry.    The  poet  has  been  nec- 

[89] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

essary  at  all  times.  Without  him  we 
should  still  be  content,  like  the  ox,  to 
look  only  for  the  next  mouthful  of  grass. 
Many  of  us,  indeed,  who  have  never  ex- 
perienced poetry,  still  spend  our  lives 
biting  herbage  and  chewing  the  cud, 
though  we  call  the  food  and  the  exercise 
by  other  names.  Money  and  social  posi- 
tion keep  the  eye  blind  and  the  ear  deaf 
to  what  the  poet  is  calling  us.  We  have 
more  need  of  the  poet  to-day  than  ever 
before,  because  of  the  greater  need  to- 
day than  ever  before  for  a  living  ideal 
that  shall  be  the  centre  of  our  emotional 
activity.  For  the  poet  works  in  faith- 
fulness to  his  ideal;  he  sets  before  us 
what  is  worshipful,  what  is  desirable 
and  worthy  our  aspirations,  and  what  is 
hopeful  and  inspiring.  These  are  what 
may  be  called  his  subject-matter.  If  he 
aim  at  anything  it  is  to  express  an  ex- 
[90] 


READING  POETRY 

perience  so  that  we,  reading  it,  shall  also 
live  the  experience  even  as  he  lived  it. 
His  success,  in  the  appeal  he  makes  to 
us,  and  his  power  in  carrying  us  with 
him,  are,  together,  the  measure  of  the 
quality  of  his  poetry.  He  also  recalls  us 
from  the  illusions  of  the  world  of  things 
to  the  realities  of  the  world  of  thinks. 
Good  food,  much  money,  high  estate  are 
good  things  to  know  and  to  have;  but  if 
our  lives  are  mainly  occupied  with  these, 
we  are  not  living,  says  the  poet;  for  we 
have  thus  severed  our  relation  with  that 
by  which  all  things,  good  and  less  good, 
have  fruitful  and  abiding  values — the 
ideal  within  us.  We  must  believe  with 
Wordsworth  that  he 

"  Who  looks 

In  steadiness,  who  hath  among  the  least  things 
An  wnder sense  of  greatest;  sees  the  parts 
As  parts,  but  with  a  feeling  of  the  whole  " 

[91] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

lives  and  experiences  what  is  worth  the 
knowing. 

The  ideal  within  us  is  a  phrase  I  per- 
mit myself  to  use  for  want  of  a  better 
expression,  merely  to  suggest  what  I 
mean.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  comprehend; 
it  is  that  which  apprehends  all  things,  so 
that  these  shall  not  be  felt  as  separate 
and  lifeless,  but  as  unified,  and  alive  be- 
cause of  the  unification.  It  must,  how- 
ever, be  a  conscious  reality  to  us  if  this 
universe  of  things  is  to  mean  anything 
for  us,  or  if  we  are  to  experience  joy. 

"  Our  meddling  intellects 
Mis-shape  the  beauteous  forms  of  things — 
We  murder  to  dissect." 

This  power  that  links  all  things,  and 
us  to  all  things,  is  the 

"  Spirit  that  knows  no  insulated  spot, 
No  chasm,  no  solitude,  from  link  to  link 
It  circulates,  the  soul  of  att  the  worlds." 

[92] 


READING  POETRY 

Wordsworth  believed  in  this  power  as 
no  poet  before  or  since  believed  in  it. 
Through  its  living  wisdom  he  was  able 
to  reveal  for  us  the  mystery  and  the 
beauty  that  are  in  all  the  common  things 
of  life.  By  its  saving  grace  he  came  to 
know  the  joy  of  a  contemplative  peace 
that  almost  passes  understanding. 

The  poet  also  points  out  the  futility  of 
gaining  the  world  and  losing  the  soul. 
The  gain  is  obtained  at  the  sacrifice  of 
the  power  to  experience  joy;  for  joy 
comes  to  us,  not  from  the  thing  as  thing, 
but  from  the  relations  the  thing  has  to 
the  infinite  number  of  other  things  in 
play  that  we  call  life.  From  this  point 
of  view  the  poet  is  the  interpreter  of  life. 
The  interpretation,  however,  is  not,  as  it 
is  in  philosophy  or  science,  a  formulation 
or  a  classification;  it  is  a  revelation;  and 
the  revelation  is  not  to  the  mind's  com- 
[93] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

prehension,  but  to  the  soul's  apprehen- 
sion. 

Let  me  try  to  illustrate  what  I  mean. 
Air  in  motion  as  wind  is  explained  by 
science  to  be  due  to  certain  conditions 
brought  about  by  the  heat  of  the  sun,  and 
the  earth's  rotation  on  its  axis.  The 
physical  fact  of  the  wind  blowing  is  a 
common  experience  at  any  season  of  the 
year.  The  thing  is  well  known  as  thing. 
How  did  this  physical  fact  affect  the 
poet  Shelley?  He  will  tell  us  in  his  own 
magnificent  language;  in  an  ode  which 
is,  perhaps,  the  most  passionately  ap- 
pealing lyric  of  the  kind  in  English  po- 
etry— the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind. 

Shelley  begins  by  addressing  the  West 
Wind  as  "  Thou  breath  of  Autumn's 
being,"  and  tells  how  the  leaves  of  the 
trees  are  being  driven  by  it  in  all  direc- 
tions. He  speaks  of  it  as  the  charioteer 
[941 


READING  POETRY 

of  "  winged  seeds  "  bearing  them  "  to 
their  dark  wintry  bed  "  to  lie  there  until 
Spring  shall  bring  Autumn's  "  azure 
sister  "  and  fill  plain  and  hill  once  more 
with  living  hues  and  odours.  He  calls 
on  it  as  the  "  wild  spirit,"  the  "  destroyer 
and  preserver,"  to  hear  him.  He  begins 
again  and  pictures  the  wind  as  a  stream 
on  which  are  being  shed  loose  clouds  like 
earth's  decaying  leaves,  "  shook  from  the 
tangled  boughs  of  Heaven  and  Ocean." 
"  On  the  blue  surface  of  thine  airy  surge," 
he  says,  "  are  spread  like  the  bright  hair 
uplifted  from  the  head  of  some  fierce 
Ma3nad  .  .  .  the  locks  of  the  ap- 
proaching storm."  He  calls  again  on 
the  West  Wind  to  hear  him: 

"  Thou  dirge 

Of  the  dy'mg  year,  to  -which  this  closing  night 
WUl  be  the  dome  of  a  vast  sepulchre, 
Vaulted  with  all  thy  congregated  might 

[95] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

Of  vapours,  from  whose  solid  atmosphere 
Black  ram,  and  fire,  and  hail  will  burst;  0, 
hear!  " 

Once  again  he  calls  on  it,  and  this  time 
the  note  of  the  appeal  is  calmer,  though 
still  intense : 

"  Thou   who   didst    waken   from    his   summer 

dreams 

The  blue  Mediterranean,  where  he  lay, 
Lulled  by  the  coil  of  his  crystalline  streams, 

Beside  a  pumice  isle  in  Baice's  bay, 

And  show  in  sleep  old  palaces  and  towers 

Quivering  within  the  wave's  intenser  day. 

All  overgrown  with  azure  moss  and  -flowers 
So  sweet,   the  sense  faints  picturing-  them! 

Thou 
For  whose  path  the  Atlantic's  level  powers 

Cleave  themselves  into  chasms,  while  far  below 
The  sea-blooms   and   the  oozy  woods  which 

wear 
The  sapless  foliage  of  the  ocean,  know 

[96] 


READING   POETRY 

Thy   voice,   and   suddenly   grow   grey   with 

fear, 
And    tremble    and    despoil    themselves:    0, 

hear!  " 

This  is  his  call.  This  is  how  the  West 
Wind  appealed  to  him.  Now  what  is  it 
he  has  to  say  to  the  West  Wind?  How 
does  he  appeal  to  it?  How  does  he  re- 
late it  to  the  ideal  within  him,  and  in  re- 
lating it,  make  it  one  with  the  play  of 
things  called  life?  Thus: — 

"  If  I  were  a  dead  leaf  thou  mightest  bear; 
If  I  were  a  swift  cloud  to  fly  with  thee; 
A  wave  to  pant  beneath  thy  power,  and  share 

The  impulse  of  thy  strength,  only  less  free 
Than  thou,  O,  uncontroulable!    If  even 
I  were  as  in  my  boyhood,  and  could  be 

The  comrade  of  thy  wanderings  over  heaven, 
As  then,  when  to  outstrip  thy  sJciey  speed 
Scarce  seemed  a  vision:  I  would  ne'er  have 
striven 

[97] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

As  thus  with  thee  in  prayer  in  my  sore  need. 
Oh!  lift  me  as  a  wave,  a  leaf,  a  cloud! 
I  fall  upon  the  thorns  of  life!    I  bleed! 

A  heavy  weight  of  hours  has  changed  and 

bowed 
One  too  like  thee:  tameless,  and  swift,  and 

proud. 

•       •        * 

Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is: 
What  if  my  leaves  are  falling  like  its  own! 
The  tumult  of  thy  mighty  harmonies 

Will  take  from  both  a  deep  autumnal  tone, 
Sweet  though  in  sadness.     Be  thou,   Spirit 

fierce, 
My  spirit!    Be  thou  me,  impetuous  one! 

Drive  my  dead  thoughts  over  the  universe, 
Like  withered  leaves,  to  quicken  a  new  birth; 
And  by  the  incantation  of  this  verse, 

Scatter  as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 
Ashes   and   sparks,    my   words   among   man- 
kind! 
Be  through  my  lips  to  unawakened  earth 

The  trumpet  of  a  prophecy!  O  wind, 

If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind?  " 

[98] 


READING  POETRY 

It  is  a  sacrilege  almost  to  break  the 
sacred  silence  that  must  follow  the  read- 
ing of  this  magnificent  prayer,  this 
achingly  moving  communion  with  Na- 
ture. An  approaching  autumnal  storm, 
near  a  wood  by  the  Arno,  had  set  Shel- 
ley's creative  imagination  weaving  the 
web  of  this  poem  with  the  golden  threads 
of  his  heart's  emotions,  and  the  colours 
of  his  magical  fancy.  Does  this  expe- 
rience show  any  likeness  to  what  we 
know,  either  through  science  or  by  our 
own  senses,  of  the  West  Wind?  Prob- 
ably not.  Our  experiences  of  the  West 
Wind  are  of  the  thing  unrelated  to  the 
infinite  number  of  other  things  we  call 
life,  untouched  by  the  ideal  within  us. 
Shelley's  experience  of  the  West  Wind 
is  alive  by  virtue  of  his  ideal,  becomes 
an  interpretation  of  life;  but  the  inter- 
pretation is  neither  a  formulation  nor  a 
[99] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

classification;  it  is,  indeed,  a  revelation. 
This  revelation,  I  have  said,  is  one  as- 
pect of  the  poet's  activity;  that  side  of 
him  with  which  he  is  himself  concerned; 
the  workings  of  his  creative  imagination 
in  a  conscious  effort  to  embody  them  as 
poetry.  The  other  side  of  him  is  in  us; 
in  the  workings  of  our  creative  imagi- 
nation, in  the  completeness  with  which 
we  succeed  in  realizing  the  poem  as  our 
own  personal  experience.  If  the  poem 
have  any  meaning  or  value  it  is  here  that 
these  are  made  manifest;  meaning  and 
value  are  precipitated  in  the  crucible  of 
our  consciousness.  Art  has  no  purpose 
other  than  this.  It  is  in  this  sense  that 
we  speak  of  the  poem  as  "  living,"  when 
it  becomes,  to  use  a  philosophical  expres- 
sion, "  a  permanent  possibility  of  ex- 
perience." We  supplement  the  poem, 
and  we  are  also  the  poet's  complement. 
[100] 


READING   POETRY 

We  say  then  that  the  poet  "  builded 
better  than  he  knew."  We  read  into  his 
work  what  he  may  never  have  thought; 
we  derive  from  it  many  experiences  that 
he  had  not.  That  is  one  of  the  mysteries 
in  all  great  creative  art.  In  its  making 
something  has  slipped  in  between 

"  The  beauty  coming  and  the  beauty  gone" 

This  quality  lies  in  the  power  of  its  in- 
finite suggestiveness,  which  the  best  po- 
etry has  in  common  with  all  creation. 
We  exercise  ourselves  in  efforts  to  spell 
out  its  meanings.  We  would  do  far 
better  were  we  simply  to  permit  the 
aroma  of  the  budding  emotion,  which  the 
suggestion  breathes  in  us,  to  spread  its 
perfume  in  silence.  It  is,  perhaps,  be- 
cause of  this  that  poetry  is  the  wonder- 
ful joy-giver  it  is.  It  enables  us  to  see 
"  the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or 
[101] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

land,"  and  to  catch  the  voices  of  mys- 
terious echoes  that  reverberate  in  our 
hearts : 

"  Such  rebounds  our  inward  ear 
Catches  sometimes  from  afar — 
Listen,  ponder,  hold  them  dear; 
'For  of  God — of  God  they  are." 

It  lingers  with  the  beneficent  sympathy 
of  the  inexpressible  pathos  that  lies  in 
such  words: 

**  But  she  is  in  her  grave,  and,  oh, 
The  difference  to  me." 

It  fills  Keats's  Ode  to  a  Nightingale, 
where  the  poet  becomes  one  with  the  bird 
by  forgetting  his  pain  in  the  joy  of 
being : 

"  Thou   wast   not    born   for   death,    immortal 

Bird! 

No  hungry  generations  tread  thee  down; 
The  voice  I  hear  this  passing  night  was  heard 
In  ancient  days  of  emperor  and  clown: 

[102] 


READING   POETRY 

Perhaps   the   self-same   song   that   found   a 

path 
Through  the  sad  heart  of  Ruth,  when  sick 

for  home, 
She  stood  in  tears  amid  the  alien  corn; 

The  same  that  oft-times  hath 
Charm'd   magic   casements,   opening   on   the 

foam 
Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn. 

Forlorn!  the  very  word  is  like  a  bell 

To  toll  me  back  from  thee  to  my  sole  self  I 
Adieu!  the  fancy  cannot  cheat  so  well 

As  she  is  famed  to  do,  deceiving  elf. 
Adieu!    Adieu!  thy  plaintive  anthem  fades 

Past    the    near    meadows,    over    the    stitt 

stream, 
Up  the  hillside;  and  now  'tis  buried  deep 

In  the  next  valley-glades: 
Was  it  a  vision  or  a  waking  dream? 

Fled  is  that  music: — Do  I  wake  or  sleep?  " 

It  is  the  spirit  that  binds  us  to  the  hope  in 
Shelley's  passionate  appeal  to  the  West 

Wind: 

"  0  Wind, 
If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind?  " 

[103] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

It  is  what  Wordsworth  felt,  and  said, 
and  did  not  say,  and  wished  to  say,  in 
Tintern  Abbey: 

"  These  beauteous  forms, 
Through  a  long  absence,  have  not  been  to  me 
As  is  a  landscape  to  a  blind  man's  eye: 
But  oft,  in  lonely  rooms,  and  Jmid  the  dm 
Of  towns  and  cities,  I  have  owed  to  them 
In  hours  of  weariness,  sensations  sweett 
Felt  m  the  blood,  and  felt  along  the  heart; 
And  passing  even  into  my  purer  mind, 
With  tranquil  restoration: — feelings  too 
Of  unremembered  pleasure:  such,  perhaps. 
As  have  no  slight  or  trivial  influence 
On  that  best  portion  of  a  good  man's  life, 
His  little,  nameless,  unremembered  acts 
Of  kindness  and  of  love.    Not  less,  I  trust, 
To  them  I  may  have  owed  another  gift, 
Of  aspect  more  sublime;  that  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery, 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world, 
Is  lightened: — that  serene  and  blessed  mood, 
In  which  the  affections  gently  lead  us  on, — 
Until  the  breath  of  this  corporeal  frame 
And  even  the  motion  of  our  human  blood 

[104] 


READING   POETRY 

Almost  suspended,  we  are  laid  asleep 
In  body,  and  become  a  living  soul: 
While  with  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony,  and  the  deep  power  of  joy, 
We  see  into  the  life  of  things." 

Shakespeare  knew  this  shy  spirit  and 
caught  her  coming  to  him  as  he  caught 
the  south  wind  coming  to  him  from  a 
bank  of  violets.  She  is  present  in  Mac- 
beth, in  King  Lear,  in  Hamlet,  in 
Othello,  and  in  some  of  the  lyrics  scat- 
tered through  his  plays: 

**  Take,  0  take  those  lips  away 
That  so  sweetly  were  forsworn, 
And  those  eyes,  the  break  of  day, 
Lights  that  do  mislead  the  morn: 
But  my  kisses  bring  again, 

Bring  again — 
Seals  of  love,  but  sedTd  in  vain, 

SeaVd  in  vain." 

It  is  this  spirit  of  suggestion,  a  crea- 
tion in  herself,  which  arises  from  a  poem 
like  the  perfume  from  a  meadow-flower, 
[105] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

and  which  the  poet  conjures  up  by  the 
magic  of  his  art,  that  is  for  us  to  catch 
and  cherish.  She  is  the  poet's  gift  to  us, 
as  Light  was  God's  gift.  Born  out  of 
the  chaotic  vortex  of  the  poet's  creative 
imagination,  she  is  yet  a  thing  of  beauty, 
and  may  be  a  joy  forever.  In  the  radiat- 
ing light  of  her  beauty  is  transfigured  all 
that  we  see,  and  feel,  and  are,  and  hope 
to  be.  She  is  the  gentle  Spirit  that  rati- 
fies and  sanctifies  for  us  the  poet's  act.  It 
is  to  keep  her  alive  that  the  poet  is  so  much 
needed  to-day. 

But  we  must  go  out  to  meet  her  or  she 
will  not  stay  with  us.  She  will  not  come 
where  she  is  not  invited,  and  where  there 
is  no  place  prepared  for  her.  For  this 
also  the  poet  is  needed — to  prepare  a 
place  for  her  in  our  hearts  by  the  music 
of  his  songs.  She  brings  joy — both  the 
pleasure  and  the  pain  of  joy.  We  can- 
[106] 


READING   POETRY 

not  be  joyous  if  we  are  busy  with  dead 
things,  with  the  things  that  chain  us  to  the 
mortar-wheel  of  life's  round.  These 
things,  as  I  have  already  said,  are  good 
and  desirable  in  their  time  and  place ;  but 
they  are  not  good  and  not  desirable  for 
all  the  time  and  in  every  place.  If  we 
accept  them  as  a  means  to  living  and  not 
as  the  end  of  living,  they  will  serve  us, 
and  not  we  them.  Let  them  then  serve 
us  to  make  some  room,  in  our  little  space 
of  years,  for  this  bringer  of  joy,  this 
vivifying  spirit  in  poetry.  And  when 
she  comes  to  us,  let  us  not  question  her 
with  our  words.  Joy  is  its  own  lan- 
guage, and  speaks  no  other.  If  we  will 
question,  let  us  question  her  interpreter, 
the  poet.  What  his  answers  will  be,  we 
may  read  in  Homer,  in  Virgil,  in  Dante, 
in  Chaucer,  in  Spenser,  in  Shakespeare, 
in  Milton,  in  Goethe,  in  Burns,  Byron, 
[107] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  Tennyson, 
Browning,  and  in  the  songs  of  all  the 
singers  who  have  walked  with  her  and 
were  most  glad  in  serving  her. 

It  is  far  from  my  purpose  to  enter  on 
an  analysis  of  the  works  of  the  poets.  I 
shall  have  accomplished  all  I  set  out  to 
do  if  I  succeed  in  suggesting  in  a  gen- 
eral way  the  kind  of  music  they  gave  us. 
The  reader  must  do  the  rest  for  himself. 
My  purpose  is  only  to  awaken  the  desire 
and  not  to  satisfy  it.  We  are  not  all 
gifted  alike;  and  what  one  may  find  in  a 
song  another  may  not,  but  may  find 
something  else;  for  the  peculiar  quality 
of  the  poet's  work  lies  in  the  universality 
of  its  appeal,  so  that  each  of  us  may  ob- 
tain pleasure  in  his  own  way. 

We  have  seen  what  the  poet's  temper 
is.  We  have  also  seen  what  our  temper 
should  be  in  listening  to  him.  If  now  we 
[108] 


READING   POETRY 

turn  to  the  poet  Homer  who  sang  in  a 
language  strange  to  our  ears  and  lived 
in  an  age  millenniums  distant  from 
ours,  and  ask  what  can  this  poet  do  for 
us;  what  special  pleasure  is  he  offer- 
ing to  humanity;  what  revelation  has  he 
made,  we  shall  find  ourselves  transported 
into  a  world  altogether  different  from 
that  in  which  we  live.  Its  atmosphere, 
its  landscapes,  its  people,  its  play  of  life 
are  of  a  time  when  the  world  was  young; 
when  men  and  women  were  still  naive 
and  simple;  when,  to  their  child-like  won- 
der and  creative  imaginations,  wind  and 
rain  and  thunder  and  ocean  and  sun  and 
stars  had  human  voices  and  spoke  a  human 
language;  when  there  was  so  much  room 
for  life  that  the  earth  seemed  to  laugh 
and  cry  with  her  children.  They  were  not 
exempt  from  the  experiences  of  sorrow 
and  the  pain  of  life;  but  they  treated 
[109] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

them,  as  all  children  will,  as  temporary 
obstructions  on  the  broad  flowing  river, 
which  could  be  set  aside  through  cour- 
age and  endeavour  and  faith  in  the  abid- 
ing deities.  If  events  happened  other- 
wise than  they  wished  or  hoped,  it  was 
well,  for  the  gods  knew  best,  and  they 
had  played  their  part  bravely  and  truly. 
If  death  came,  it  was  well  also;  for  if 
the  spear  had  been  cast  by  Diomede  or 
by  Hector  it  was  Athene  or  it  was  Hera 
who  had  guided  it.  They  lived  simply 
but  sternly;  they  were  passionate  lovers 
and  passionate  friends;  noble  fathers 
and  splendid  husbands:  they  were  good 
haters  and  good  fighters,  loyal  heroes  in 
peace  or  in  war.  And  they  bred  Homer. 
What  Achilles  and  Agamemnon  and 
Patroclus  and  Ajax  and  Diomede  did  in 
many  acts,  Homer  accomplished  in  one 
transcendent  act — in  the  Iliad.  In  this 
[110] 


READING  POETRY 

poem  he  not  only  sang  his  song  of 
praise  for  the  heroic  souls  of  Achilles 
and  his  companions,  but  he  precipitated 
a  national  life  in  everlasting  words.  He 
embodied  the  gods  of  his  land  and  set 
the  standard  for  the  heroic  life  which 
inspired  the  Greeks  for  a  millennium. 
And  he  established  the  reality  of  the 
ideal  in  art  and  life.  All  that  Greece  has 
given  us,  and  all  she  gave  that  has  not  been 
recovered,  both  in  art  and  thought,  had 
its  fount  of  inspiration  in  this  almost  mar- 
vellous achievement  in  poetry;  in  the 
spirit  of  suggestion  which  blooms  in  al- 
most every  line,  and  in  the  poet's  dra- 
matically embodying  genius.  His  men 
and  women  live,  whether  in  sorrow  or 
anger,  in  passion  or  play.  They  are  not 
coloured  shadows  flitting  across  a  white 
page,  but  creatures  of  flesh  and  blood, 
moving  under  sunny  skies.  From  an- 
[111] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

other  side  Homer's  poem  was  to  the  an- 
cient Greeks  what  the  Old  Testament 
was  to  the  ancient  Jews — their  moral 
code  and  standard  of  conduct.  The  les- 
sons taught  by  the  anger  of  Achilles 
against  Agamemnon  and  its  dire  result 
on  the  Grecian  army;  by  the  overwhelm- 
ing love  of  Achilles  for  his  friend  Pa- 
troclus ;  by  his  noble  sympathy  for  Priam 
in  his  sorrow;  by  the  pathos  of  his  com- 
ing doom  in  spite  of  his  great  heart; 
by  the  sublime  serenity  of  spirit  in  which 
all  Homer's  heroes  accept  life  and  fate; 
— the  lessons  the  Greeks  derived  from 
these  became  bountifully  manifest  in 
their  later  life  as  a  nation,  in  the  trag- 
edies of  j^Eschylus,  the  comedies  of  Aris- 
tophanes, the  dialogues  of  Plato,  the 
sculptures  of  Praxiteles  and  Phidias,  the 
campaigns  of  Alexander,  the  building  of 
the  Acropolis  and  the  Parthenon,  and  in 


READING   POETRY 

their  worship  of  beauty.  And  what  we 
ourselves  owe  to  the  Greeks  no  one  man 
can  adequately  express. 

If  you  now  ask  what  Homer,  the  poet, 
will  do  for  you,  I  can  only  answer  that 
what  he  did  three  thousand  years  ago  he  is 
doing  to-day.  If  you  do  not  know  this 
it  is  because  you  have  been  occupying 
yourself  with  dead  things,  and  have  not 
realized  the  living  power  of  poetry.  In- 
deed, though  you  may  not  know  it,  what 
is  best  in  yourself  and  in  your  life  has 
grown  there  nurtured  by  the  hidden  in- 
fluences that  the  stream  of  thought  has 
carried  down  the  ages  from  these  same 
Hellenic  springs. 

One  thing,  however,  Homer  will  cer- 
tainly do  for  you,  if  you  read  him  for 
pleasure:  he  will  keep  you  young.  You 
will  miss  the  magnificent  music  of  his 
language  if  you  do  not  know  Greek;  but 
[113] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

read  him  in  the  prose  version  of  Butcher, 
Lang  and  Myers,  and  follow  that  with 
Lord  Derby's  version  in  order  to  taste 
a  little  of  the  flavour  of  the  poetry. 
When  you  have  done  this,  begin  again: 
and  then  begin  all  over  again,  and  con- 
tinue until  you  feel  heroic  presences 
about  you,  and  become  imbued  with  what 
Matthew  Arnold  called  his  "  high  seri- 
ousness." Young  people,  especially, 
should  read  Homer.  He  has  made  even 
more  heroes  than  he  has  sung.  The  glory 
of  him  is  catching  to  the  youthful  mind, 
which  sees  the  fact  ideally  and  surrounds 
it  with  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  a  ro- 
mantic atmosphere.  That  is  just  what 
Homer  did;  that  is  what  makes  his  facts 
alive;  and  that  is  why  his  interpretation 
comes  to  us  as  a  revelation. 

Some  six  hundred  years  after  Homer 
sang,  there  was  born  at  Eleusis  the  man 
[114] 


READING   POETRY 

"  who  picked  up  the  fragments  from  the 
mighty  feasts  of  Homer,"  and  remoulded 
them  into  poems  of  tragedy  which  have 
never  been  surpassed,  and  have  been 
equalled  by  our  own  Shakespeare  alone 
in  one  or  two  of  his  plays.  People  in 
those  days  said  that  ^Bschylus  had  been 
inspired  by  Dionysus  in  a  dream;  other- 
wise they  could  not  explain  how  he  wrote 
his  wonder-working  masterpieces.  So- 
phocles told  him  that  "  he  did  what  he 
ought  to  do,  but  he  did  it  without  know- 
ing." What  they  meant  may  be  appre- 
ciated if  we  have  read  our  Shakespeare 
as  we  ought  to  read  him,  and  if  we  have 
felt  the  sublime  imaginative  power  of 
Job.  The  tragedies  of  JEschylus  have 
occupied  the  thoughts  of  many  writers; 
but  the  English  reader  will  do  wisely  if 
he  read  Symonds'  "  The  Greek  Poets," 
before  he  attempts  the  plays,  either  in  the 
[115] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

originals  or  in  translations.  Symonds' 
exposition  of  the  trilogy  of  the  Oresteia 
is  masterly.  I  wish  I  had  his  knowledge 
and  gifts  to  suggest  even  what  ^Bschylus 
means  as  a  tragic  poet.  The  concen- 
trated pathos  with  which  we  are  over- 
whelmed in  witnessing  the  suffering 
brought  about  by  human  passion  in  play 
against  the  forces  which  hold  the  uni- 
verse, is  realized  in  these  tragedies  with 
an  art  so  consummate,  that  as  art  it  is 
unique  in  literature.  We  can  but  bow 
our  heads  in  fear  and  trembling  as  be- 
fore some  awful  deity.  What  Swin- 
burne says  of  attempting  to  compare 
King  Lear  with  Othello  may  be  quoted 
to  express  the  sense  of  helplessness  in 
trying  to  estimate  the  special  quality  of 
the  poetry  of  ^Bschylus.  "  The  result, 
for  any  reader  of  human  intelligence 
and  decent  humility  in  sight  of  what  is 
[116] 


READING   POETRY 

highest  in  the  spiritual  world,  must  al- 
ways he  a  sense  of  adoring  doubt  and  ex- 
alting hesitation."  Moved  hy  this  sense, 
let  us  accept  JBschylus  for  whatsoever 
we  may  find  in  him.  The  pleasure  he 
can  give  us  is  poignant,  but,  rightly 
taken,  bracing  and  purifying  as  an  Al- 
pine climb. 

What  Homer  is  to  epic,  and  ^Eschylus 
to  tragic  poetry,  that  is  Aristophanes  to 
comic  poetry.  Here,  again,  if  we  would 
taste  the  real  flavour  of  this  rampant  and 
lyric  spirit,  Shakespeare  will  help  us. 
But,  as  Mr.  Symonds  points  out: 

"  We  must  not  expect  to  find  the  gist 
of  Aristophanes  in  vivid  portraits  of 
character,  in  situations  borrowed  from 
every-day  life,  in  witty  dialogue,  in  care- 
fully constructed  plots  arriving  at  felici- 
tous conclusions.  All  these  elements,  in- 
deed, he  has;  but  these  are  not  the  main 
[117] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

points  of  his  art.  His  plays  are  not 
comedies  in  the  sense  in  which  we  use  the 
word,  but  scenic  allegories.  Titanic 
forces  in  which  the  whole  creation  is 
turned  upside  down;  transcendental  trav- 
esties, enormous  orgies  of  wild  fancy 
and  unbridled  imagination;  Dionysiac 
dances  in  which  tears  are  mingled  with 
laughter,  and  fire  with  wine;  choruses 
that,  underneath  their  oceanic  merriment 
of  leaping  waves,  hide  silent  deeps  of 
unstirred  thought." 

There  is  pleasure  in  this  man,  if  you 
like,  but  you  must  come  well  filled  with 
the  spirit  of  Greek  life  to  enjoy  him  as 
he  should  be  enjoyed.  Symonds  tried  to 
suggest  the  secret  of  his  strength  and 
charm,  but  confessed  his  inability  to  do 
him  justice:  "The  epithets  which  con- 
tinually rise  to  our  lips  in  speaking  of 
him — radiant,  resplendent,  swift,  keen, 
[118] 


READING   POETRY 

cheerful,  flashing,  magical — carry  no  real 
notion  of  the  marvellous  and  subtle  spirit 
that  animates  his  comedy  with  life  pecul- 
iar to  itself." 

If  you  would  know  the  Athens  and 
the  Athenians  of  that  day  as  you  know 
London  and  Londoners  through  Fal- 
stafF,  read  these  comedies.  They  are  all 
alive  here,  high  and  low,  rich  and  poor, 
bad  and  good,  mostly  bad  and  somewhat 
good,  but  all  on  pleasure  bent  and  care- 
less of  the  kind  they  get.  If  you  read 
him,  then  for  your  soul's  sake,  read  him 
aright,  and  not  for  what  may  seem  to 
you  at  first  the  lewd  license  of  a  reckless 
"  sport "  whose  mouth  is  continually 
filled  with  bawdy  jests.  This  is  not 
Aristophanes  as  it  is  not  Rabelais,  though 
some  nice  people  have  the  nasty  minds 
to  think  it  is.  Aristophanes  laughed  his 
mighty  laughter  because  he  felt  in  the 
[1191 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

depths  of  his  great  heart  and  saw  with 
the  power  of  his  keen  brain  what  fools 
we  mortals  be.  Take  his  pleasure  cleanly. 
If  we  turn  with  disgust  from  pictures  of 
Bacchic  frenzy,  let  us  remember  that  hu- 
man nature  is  still  human  nature,  and 
that  what  Aristophanes  laughed  at  may 
still  be  lurking  in  our  midst,  and  all  the 
worse  because  lurking.  Let  our  politi- 
cians read  the  Knights,  our  lawyers  the 
Clouds  and  Wasps,  and  our  literary  men 
the  Frogs,  and  our  women  the  Lysistrata; 
and  if  they  do  not  laugh  at  themselves, 
then  is  the  sense  of  humour  in  them  dead ; 
or  else,  it  may  be,  they  have  turned  aside 
to  laugh  in  their  sleeves.  Well,  with  Aris- 
tophanes, we  can  also  afford  to  laugh, 
both  with  them  and  at  them;  he  is  good 
to  live  with. 

The  splendid  resounding  music  of  the 
Greek  epic  produced  its  echo  in  Rome, 
[120] 


READING  POETRY 

in  Virgil's  poem  reciting  the  adventures 
of  JEneas  of  Troy.  This  is  not  the  Iliad, 
nor  even  the  Odyssey.,  though  it  carries 
the  pathetic  note  of  the  latter;  but  it  is  a 
beautiful  poem,  nevertheless.  Its  music 
beat  and  trembled  in  the  heart  of  many  a 
noble  Roman  and  sent  him  proudly  walk- 
ing the  Appian  Way  in  conscious  dig- 
nity of  his  descent  from  the  gods,  and  in 
a  conviction  of  their  special  protection. 
The  genius  of  Rome,  however,  lay  not 
in  poetry;  it  found  its  best  expressions  in 
other  ways — in  the  prose  of  Livy  and 
Cicero,  in  statesmanship  and  generalship 
and  governorship. 

The  language  of  the  Latins  had  to  be- 
come the  language  of  the  Italian  people, 
and  the  religion  of  Jupiter  had  to  give 
way  to  the  religion  of  Christ,  before  the 
genius  of  Italy  partook  of  the  "  high 
seriousness "  of  Homer's  poetic  genius. 
[121] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

When  Dante  expressed  it  the  voice  was  a 
new  voice  altogether,  clear,  solemn,  im- 
pressive, with  a  music  all  its  own.  It 
sang  the  epic  of  the  life  of  thought,  not 
of  the  life  of  action,  and  of  that  side  of 
thought  which  concerns  itself  with  the 
religious  emotion,  and  of  that  phase  of 
the  religious  emotion  which  finds  its 
highest  longings  satisfied  in  Catholicism. 
Dante's  epic  is  philosophy,  history, 
prophecy  expressed  with  a  poetic  quality 
that  is  classic;  but  its  poetry  is  overshad- 
owed by  the  power  of  one  of  the  pro- 
foundest  intellects  the  world  has  known. 
It  should  be  read  as  the  Bible  should  be 
read — in  parts;  for  its  appeal  is  to  many 
moods.  It  is  a  deeply  moving  and  a 
deeply  arresting  poem,  filled  with  the 
suggestive  spirit,  and  demanding  of  us 
our  best  intellectual  powers  as  well  as  our 
imagination.  Dante's  awful  power  rises, 
[122] 


READING  POETRY 

to  adopt  Wordsworth's  language  of  the 
effect  on  him  of  the  Alps,  "  from  the 
mind's  abyss  like  an  unfathered  vapour 
that  enwraps,  at  once,  some  lonely  trav- 
eller " ;  we  are  in  danger  of  being  lost  in 
it.  Few  English  readers  can  enjoy  him 
in  his  own  Tuscan  Italian;  and  not  many 
native  Italians  have  fathomed  all  his 
meanings.  Bulky  commentaries  have  been 
compiled  by  devoted  students  to  explain 
him,  and  the  end  is  not  yet.  Some  take 
the  poem  as  a  satire,  others  as  a  proph- 
ecy, others  again  as  the  revelation  of  a 
great  soul's  profound  insight  into  life. 
In  whichever  way  it  be  taken  its  power  is 
such  that  it  can  fulfil  almost  any  high  de- 
mand we  make  of  it.  What  most  we  mar- 
vel at  is  the  man,  Dante,  himself — his 
self-mastery,  his  artistic  restraint,  his 
wonderful  ability  to  transmute  passion 
into  living,  singing  words.  These  quali- 
[123] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

ties  have  never  before  or  since  been  ex- 
emplified in  anything  approaching  the  de- 
gree of  perfection  of  the  Divine  Comedy. 
"  Serenest  of  the  progeny  of  God," 
Browning  calls  him: 

*'  Pacer  of  the  shore 

Where  glutted  hell  disgorgeth  "filthiest  gloom, 
Unbitten  by  its  whirling  sulphur-spume — 
Or  whence  the  grieved  and  obscure  waters  slope 
Into  a  darkness  quieted  by  hope; 
PlucJcer  of  amaranth,  grown  beneath  God's  eye, 
In  gracious  twilight,  where  His  chosen  lie" 

Scarce  a  century  after  Dante's  death, 
and  contemporary  with  Dante's  first  com- 
mentator, Boccaccio,  an  altogether  new 
and  fresh  poetic  voice  sang,  and  in  a 
language  that  had  up  to  then  but  lisped 
in  numbers.  The  voice  was  the  English 
voice  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer.  It  had  not 
the  sonority  of  the  Greek  nor  the  liquid- 
ness  of  the  Italian;  but  its  musical  qual- 
ity was  very  pleasant  to  the  ears  of  the 
[124] 


READING  POETRY 

tough  and  rough  Englishmen  of  dale 
and  dell  who  had  scarce  heard  of  the  ex- 
istence of  Homer  or  Dante.  The  printer 
was  still  playing  with  his  craft,  or  ex- 
perimenting with  moulding  molten  metal; 
and  scholars  were  still  busy  searching  the 
dusty  scriptoria  of  the  monasteries  on 
the  continent.  Chaucer  came  just  when 
people  were  awaking  from  a  deep  sleep. 
His  songs  and  tales  helped  to  open  their 
eyes  more  widely,  so  that  they  began  to 
see  how  goodly  a  thing  it  was  for  breth- 
ren to  dwell  together;  to  feel  that  life 
was  good  also,  and  that  the  land  was 
kindly  and  sweet  and  lovely  in  many 
ways.  Chaucer's  heart  was  big  and 
warm.  He  had  a  smiling  face  and  a 
cheery  word  for  the  poor  man,  and  an 
Englishman's  respectful  reverence  for 
the  nobleman.  He  did  his  daily  work 
like  an  honest  citizen,  but  when  that  was 
[125] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

done  he  would  walk  in  the  fields,  or  read 
in  his  books,  or  sit  down  to  the  making 
of  his  "  songes  and  ditties."  He  tells 
us  himself  he  was  "  small  and  fair  of 
face,"  stout,  "  a  puppet  in  an  arm  to  em- 
brace for  any  woman,"  and  "  elfish  by 
his  countenance."  He  was  a  fair  scholar, 
had  travelled,  and  spoke  both  French 
and  Italian.  He  had  read  Dante  and 
met  Boccaccio.  He  wrote  as  he  felt, 
from  the  full  sense  of  his  joy  in  living. 
He  reverenced  Virgil,  Ovid,  Homer, 
Lucan  and  Statius,  and  hoped  he  had 
done  some  little  himself  which  might  earn 
a  place  for  him  beside  them: 

"  And  I  come  after,  gleaning  here  and  there, 
And  am  full  glad  if  I  can  find  an  ear 
Of  any  goodly  word  that  ye  have  left." 

He  held  women  in  esteem,  though  his 

married  life  had  not  been  a  happy  one. 

His  love  for  them,  however,  had  in  it  a 

[126] 


READING   POETRY 

decided  flavour  of  kindly  acceptance  of 
their  "  nice  vanity."  Yet  he  could  say, 
"  in  truthfulness  " : — 

"  No  man  in  humbleness  can  him  acquit 
As  women  can,  nor  can  be  half  so  true 
As  women  are." 

He  possessed  a  deeply  religious  nature, 
but  his  religion  enriched,  it  did  not  thin, 
a  character  naturally  fruitful  in  im- 
pulses of  charity,  affection  and  kindli- 
ness. He  had  known  the  trials  and  sor- 
rows of  life  and  came  to  learn  wisdom 
without  becoming  soured.  If  he  loved 
to  read  his  "  bookes  "  he  loved  better  to 
commune  with  nature,  especially  in  the 
springtime: — 

"  When  that  the  month  of  May 
Is  come,  and  that  I  hear  the  fowles  sing, 
And  see  the  flowers  as  they  begin  to  spring, 
Farewell  my  book,  and  my  devotion." 

So  wide  were  his  sympathies  and  so 
[127] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

large  his  field  of  enjoyment  that  his 
poems  are  a  living  panorama  of  the  life 
of  England  of  his  day.  Men  and  women 
in  all  stations  and  of  all  degrees — knight, 
nun,  monk,  clerk,  franklin,  squire,  pri- 
oress, pardoner,  shipman,  and  merchant, 
parson  and  lawyer,  miller  and  reeve — all 
live  again  by  the  magic  of  his  creative 
imagination.  "  Here  is  God's  plenty," 
exclaimed  Dry  den;  that  is  the  very 
phrase  to  sum  up  Chaucer's  work — 
"  God's  plenty."  Partake  of  this  plenty, 
if  you  seek  for  the  pleasure  of  poetry, 
in  the  Canterbury  Tales,,  the  House  of 
Fame,  the  Legend  of  Good  Women. 
They  exude  the  juices  of  fat  beeves,  full 
kine  and  ripe  fruits.  The  atmosphere 
in  which  we  realize  them  is  that  of  "  mel- 
low fruit  fulness,"  as  if  they  had  grown 
to  ripeness  as  "  close-bosomed  friends  of 
the  maturing  sun."  The  light  that  is  re- 
[128] 


READING   POETRY 

fleeted  from  them  is  like  the  droppings 
of  honeycombs. 

Chaucer  is  properly  the  founder  of 
the  English  language;  he  broadened  its 
stream  and  sent  it  flowing  in  volume 
and  fulness  to  Spenser  and  Marlowe  and 
Shakespeare.  An  example  of  his  use  of 
it  which  may  also  serve  to  illustrate  the 
temper  of  the  man  is  well  worth  quoting. 
It  is  the  Englishman,  Chaucer's  Good 
Counsel : 

"  Flee  from  the  press,  and  dwell  with  soothfast- 
ness; 

Suffice  thee  thy  good,  though  it  be  small; 
For  hoard  hath  hate,  and  climbing  fickleness: 
Press  hath  envy,  and  wealth  is  blinded  all. 
Savour  no  more  than  thee  behove  shall; 
Do  well  thyself  that  other  folk  canst  rede; 
And  truth  thee  shall  deliver,  it  is  no  dread. 

"  Paine  thee  not  each  crooked  to  redress 
In  trust  of  her  that  turneth  as  a  ball. 
Great  e  rest  stands  in  little  business. 
Beware  also  to  spurn  against  a  nail. 

[129] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

Strive  not  as  does  a  pitcher  with  a  wall. 
Deeme  thyself  that  deemest  others'  deed; 
And  truth  thee  shall  deliver,  it  is  no  dread. 

"  That  thee  is  sent  receive  in  buxomness; 
The  wrestling  of  this  world  asJceth  a  fall. 
Here  is  no  home,  here  is  but  wilderness. 
Forth,  pilgrime!  forth,  beast  out  of  thy  stall! 
Look  up  on  high,  and  thanke  God  of  all. 
Waive  thy  lust,  and  let  thy  ghost  thee  lead, 
And  truth  shall  thee  deliver,  it  is  no  dread" 

What  Shakespeare  did  with  this  lan- 
guage and  this  beginning  of  the  wisdom 
of  life,  I  hope  to  suggest  in  the  next 
chapter.  Shakespeare  received  it  from 
Chaucer  through  Spenser  and  Marlowe 
and  gave  it  still  more  enriched  to  Milton, 
who  sent  it  sounding  through  organ 
pipes  and  made  such  music  as  brought 
Homer  back  living  in  memory.  With 
the  power  of  an  imagination  akin  to 
Dante's,  and  an  insight  made  clear  and 
pure  by  the  sacred  flame  of  the  Bible, 
[130] 


READING  POETRY 

Milton  spread  eagle's  wings  and  almost 
touched  heaven's  heights  in  Paradise 
Lost.  We  stand  in  exulting  humility 
before  heroic  Lucifer  as  we  stood  in 
heartfelt  homage  before  heroic  Achilles. 
It  was  a  new  experience  for  the  people 
of  Milton's  day,  who  felt  the  human 
quality  of  Satan's  spirit.  But  here  is 
truly  one  of  those  "  music-makers," 
those  "  dreamers  of  dreams,"  those 
"  world-lovers  and  world- forsakers,"  who 
could  rebuild  a  Nineveh  and  overthrow 
it  with  his  prophesying.  With  Milton 
singing  to  them  they  could  go  forth  and 
conquer  a  crown,  for  he  placed  in  them 
the  very  spirit  of  the  Lord.  This  was 
Milton  the  prophet.  But  Milton  was 
more  than  a  prophet,  he  was  a  poet,  with 
a  man's  heart  and  a  man's  love  in  it. 
Look  for  both  in  II  Penseroso,,  in  L* Al- 
legro and  in  Lycidas.,  and  your  own 
[131] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

hearts  will  be  touched  so  that  your  in- 
ward ear  will  catch  something  to  hold 
dear  for  the  rest  of  life.  And  it  will  be 
borne  to  you  in  exquisite  music : 

"  Weep  no  more,  woful  Shepherds,  weep  no 

more, 

For  Lycidas  your  sorrow  is  not  dead, 
Sunk  though  he  be  beneath  the  wat'ry  floor, 
So  sinks  the  day-star  in  the  Ocean  bed, 
And  yet  anon  repairs  his  drooping  head, 
And  tricks  his  beams,  and  with  new  spangled 

ore 

Flames  in  the  forehead  of  the  morning  sky: 
So  Lycidas  sunk  low,  but  mounted  high, 
Through  the  dear  might  of  him  that  walked 

the  waves, 

Where  other  groves,  and  other  streams  along, 
With  nectar  pure  his  oozy  locks  he  laves, 
And  hears  the  unexpressive  nuptial  song, 
In  the  blest  Kingdoms  meek  of  joy  and  love. 

"  Thus  sang  the  uncouth  swain  to  the  oaks  and 

rills, 

While  the  still  morn  went  out  with  sandals 
grey, 


READING  POETRY 

He  touched  the  tender  stops  of  various  quills, 
With  eager  thought  warbling  his  Doric  lay: 
And  now  the  sun  had  sir  etch' d  out  all  the 

hills, 

And  now  was  dropt  into  the  western  bay; 
At  last  he  rose,  and  twitched  his  mantle  blue: 
To-morrow  to  fresh  woods,  and  pastures  new." 


"  To-morrow  to  fresh  woods  and  pas- 
tures new."  The  to-morrow  broke,  the 
sun  "  flaming  the  forehead  of  the  morn- 
ing sky  "  with  the  "  new  spangled  ore  " 
of  Blake,  Burns,  Keats  and  Shelley. 
Wordsworth  also  came,  but  the  dawn  of 
his  advent  was  clouded,  and  only  now  is 
his  sun  filling  a  new  day  with  its  efful- 
gent light. 

The  mystery  of  this  enchanter  spirit 
of  poetry  grows  with  the  growing  line 
of  the  poets  themselves.  We  ask  our- 
selves: how  comes  this  spirit?  Whence 
comes  it? 

[133] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

"  What  objects  are  the  fountains 

Of  thy  happy  strain? 
What  fields,  or  waves,  or  mountains? 

What  shape  of  sky  or  plain? 
What  love  of  thine  own  kind?     What  igno- 
rance of  pain?  " 

It  is  not  created  by  science,  nor  does 
it  evidently  spring  from  philosophy. 
Neither  Blake  nor  Burns  nor  Keats  was 
taught  in  any  great  school  of  learning. 
How  did  Blake  come  to  write  the  Cradle 
Song? 

"  Sleep,  sleep,  beauty  bright, 
Dreaming  m  the  joys  of  night: 
Sleep,  sleep;  in  thy  sleep 
Little  sorrows  sit  and  weep. 

Sweet  babe,  m  thy  face 
Soft  desires  I  can  trace, 
Secret  joys  and  secret  smiles, 
Little  pretty  mfant  wiles. 

As  thy  softest  limbs  I  feel, 
Smiles  as  of  the  morning  steal 

[184] 


READING  POETRY 

O'er  ihy  cheek,  and  o'er  thy  breast 
Where  thy  little  heart  doth  rest. 

O  the  cunning  wiles  that  weep 

In  thy  little  heart  asleep! 

When  thy  little  heart  doth  wake, 

Then  the  dreadful  night  shall  break." 

Or  this,  Love's  Secret? 

"  Never  seek  to  tell  thy  love, 

Love  that  never  told  can  be; 
For  the  gentle  wind  doth  move 
Silently,  invisibly. 

I  told  my  love,  I  told  my  love, 

I  told  her  all  my  heart, 
Trembling,  cold,  m  ghastly  fears, 

Ah!  she  did  depart! 

'Soon  after  she  was  gone  from  me, 

A  traveller  came  by, 
'Silently,  mvisibly: 

He  took  her  with  a  sigh." 

These  tear-compelling,   heart-breaking 
songs,  in  which  we  seem  to  see  and  feel 
[135] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

the  soul  of  pain  glowing  in  the  joy  of 
love,  as  a  ship-wrecked  sailor  on  a  stormy 
sea  might  see  and  feel  the  glowing  ball 
of  light,  thrown  to  him  by  an  approach- 
ing ship,  rising  out  of  the  darkness, 
these  songs  leave  us  staring  with  wide 
eyes.  There  is  nothing  to  say.  All  that 
we  would  say  and  cannot  say  reverber- 
ates in  the  mind  and  lingers  in  the  heart. 
The  secret  of  the  mystery  of  pain  seems 
for  a  moment  to  unfold  itself;  but  the 
next  moment  it  is  gone.  But  the  poem 
is  still  there;  so  that  we  may,  if  we  will, 
recover  the  experience  to  spell  out,  for 
our  soul's  sake,  the  meaning  of  the  mys- 
tery that  surrounds  us. 

Perhaps  we  touch  the  heart  of  the 
spirit  of  poetry,  if  we  say,  with  Plato, 
that  she  is  born  of  divine  power,  and  that 
all  good  poets  compose  their  beautiful 
poems  when  inspired  and  possessed. 
[136] 


READING  POETRY 

Perhaps  the  strings,  so  to  speak,  of  the 
poet's  soul  are  sometimes  so  stretched  by 
emotion  that,  like  the  ^Bolian  harp,  mu- 
sic flows  from  them  at  the  least  breath 
of  the  winds  of  circumstance.  But  if  we 
accept  either  suggestion  we  are  still  face 
to  face  with  the  problem  of  the  poet's 
art,  with  the  fact  that  the  poet  does  con- 
sciously shape  his  songs.  Plato  would 
not  acknowledge  that  the  poet  did  com- 
pose his  poems  as  works  of  art;  he  con- 
sidered poetic  inspiration  akin  to  mad- 
ness. j^Eschylus  may  have  been  mad 
when  he  wrote  the  Agamemnon;  if  so, 
it  was  a  remarkable  form  of  madness  to 
give  us  what  is  acknowledged  to  be  the 
perfect  type  of  tragic  dramatic  art. 
They  said  Blake  also  was  mad;  it  must 
have  been  some  divine  madness,  then,  that 
produced  the  Songs  of  Innocence.  Was 
Burns  also  mad  when  he  wrote  Ye 
[137] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

banks  and  braes  o'  bonnie  Doon,  High- 
land Mary,  Tarn  O'Shanter,  and  The 
Jolly  Beggars?  Was  Keats  mad  when 
he  sang  his  Ode  to  a  Nightingale,  his 
Ode  to  Autumn,  his  Ode  to  a  Grecian 
Urn?  Was  Shelley  mad  in  the  Epipsy- 
chidion,  the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  and 
the  Triumph  of  Life? 

I  have  already  touched  on  this  mys- 
tery of  poetry,  and  I  am  compelled  to 
the  only  satisfying  explanation  in  as- 
suming that  the  poet  as  man  and  the  poet 
as  artist  are  two  different  beings;  that 
what  the  man  lives  is  gathered  in  by  the 
poet  for  the  stuff  of  his  poetry,  which  he 
consciously  weaves,  with  the  aid  of  his 
creative  imagination,  into  poems.  Fur- 
ther, that  the  purpose  of  his  art,  as  of  all 
art,  is  fulfilled  by  our  creative  imagina- 
tion, which  refashions  the  poet's  experi- 
ences and  suggestions  into  forms  of  our 
[138] 


READING   POETRY 

own  emotions.  Here  we  tap  the  springs 
of  the  pleasure  derived  from  the  read- 
ing of  poetry:  we  taste  the  poet's  joy  in 
creating.  This  is  the  pleasure  we  feel. 
That  poetry  can  affect  different  people 
in  different  ways  is  due  to  the  fact  that 
what  the  poet  reveals  is  truth  in  the  form 
of  beauty.  I  am  not  using  these  words 
in  any  transcendental  sense.  It  is  beauty, 
because  of  the  power  of  his  art  to  make 
its  appeal  universal;  and  it  is  truth,  be- 
cause of  its  power  to  call  forth  a  univer- 
sal response.  That  is  why  the  poet  sings 
of  love,  of  joy,  of  sorrow,  of  nature,  of 
the  struggle  between  the  forces  of  pas- 
sion and  the  forces  of  circumstance. 
This  is  what  the  poet  means,  and  all  that 
he  means.  The  value  of  his  poetry  is  for 
us  to  determine.  If  we  have  found 
pleasure  in  the  songs,  then  it  is  for  us  to 
do  our  part;  and  that  part  is  to  re-ex- 
[139] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 

press  what  the  poet  said  in  music,  in 
terms  of  life — in  doing  and  being.  It  is 
we  who  must  justify  the  poet.  It  is  what 
we  are  unconsciously  doing  all  the  time; 
and  that  is  why  the  poet  is  content  to  la- 
bour and  to  wait.  But  we  would  do  bet- 
ter by  responding  more  quickly.  We 
miss  so  much  joy  by  our  procrastination; 
and  life  is  not  too  long. 

"  0  Wind! 
If  Winter  comes,  can  Spring  be  far  behind?  " 


[140] 


IV 

THE  PLEASURE  OF 
READING  SHAKESPEARE 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 

S  H AKESPEARE 


F  I  were  asked  what  books 
should  be  read,  by  way  of  prep- 
aration, before  entering  on  the 
reading  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  I  should 
answer  unhesitatingly,  Lamb's  :<  Tales 
from  Shakespeare,"  and  a  few  essays 
Lamb  wrote,  in  particular  the  essay 
"  On  the  Tragedies  of  Shakespeare, 
Considered  with  Reference  to  their  Fit- 
ness for  Stage  Presentation."  I  single 
out  Lamb,  in  this  connection,  though  he 
is  not  what  may  be  termed  a  professional 
writer  on  Shakespeare,  because  of  the 
sanity  and  sureness  of  his  critical  in- 
sight, perhaps  the  sanest  and  surest  of 
all  the  critics  who  have  expounded  the 
[143] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

master.  And,  in  saying  this,  I  am  not 
forgetting  the  valuable  "  whole  volumes 
in  folio  "  which  have  been  indited,  from 
Dryden  and  Pope  to  Johnson  and  Cole- 
ridge, down  to  Dowden,  Brandes  and 
Bradley.  Of  course,  no  student  of 
Shakespeare  can  afford  to  ignore  Cole- 
ridge. He  did  such  splendid  pioneer 
work,  in  this  now  much-travelled  land, 
that  the  roads  he  made  must  be  the 
highways  for  all  who  would  follow  to 
study.  But  the  general  reader  will  not 
concern  himself  so  seriously;  he  is  read- 
ing for  pleasure,  and  the  experience 
which  is  to  come  to  him  by  the  wayside. 
For  him  Lamb  is  a  charming  and  de- 
lightful guide.  He  himself  went  to  en- 
joy the  Promised  Land,  and  he  enjoyed 
it  thoroughly.  I  need  hardly  say  that  he 
knew  how  to  tell  us  of  what  he  saw. 
Lamb  was  quite  a  different  being  from 
[144] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

the  worthy  gentleman  who  dissects  and 
analyzes  texts,  useful  and  harmless  as 
such  work  must  be;  nor  was  he  given  to 
drawing  "  out  the  thread  of  his  verbosity 
finer  than  the  staple  of  his  argument." 
He  had  a  love  for  literature  and,  gifted 
as  he  was  with  a  fine  discrimination  and 
sympathetic  power  of  insight,  he  came  to 
know  and  to  love  Shakespeare  and  his 
plays.  In  knowing  them  he  found  that 
his  mind  had  become  enriched,  his  spirit 
refreshed  and  his  nature  enlarged.  Such 
an  experience  was  too  good  to  keep  to 
himself — that  was  not  Lamb's  way — so 
Lamb  sat  himself  down  to  tell  us  how  he 
got  it;  and  in  telling  us  this,  he  tries  to 
make  us  go  and  do  likewise.  His  way  is 
not  his  friend  Coleridge's  way;  but  he 
"  gets  there,"  as  they  say  in  the  market- 
place, notwithstanding.  In  the  essay  I 
have  named  Lamb  is  upholding  the  ar- 
[145] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

gument  that  Shakespeare's  plays  are  in- 
compatible with  stage  representation.  I 
take  leave  to  quote  one  paragraph,  from 
which  it  will  be  seen  that  Lamb  knew  his 
subject  to  the  centre,  and  that  he  could 
rise  to  its  dignity  in  dignity. 

"  We  talk,"  he  says,  "  of  Shakespeare's 
admirable  observation  of  life,  when  we 
should  feel  that,  not  from  a  petty  inqui- 
sition into  those  cheap  and  every-day 
characters  which  surrounded  him,  as 
they  surround  us,  but  from  his  own  mind, 
which  was,  to  borrow  a  phrase  of  Ben 
Jonson's,  the  very  *  sphere  of  humanity/ 
he  fetched  those  images  of  virtue  and  of 
knowledge,  of  which  everyone  of  us, 
recognizing  a  part,  think  we  comprehend 
in  our  natures  the  whole;  and  oftentimes 
mistake  the  powers  which  he  positively 
creates  in  us  for  nothing  more  than  the 
indigenous  faculties  of  our  minds,  which 
[146] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

only  waited  the  application  of  corre- 
sponding virtues  in  him  to  return  a  full 
and  clear  echo  of  the  same." 

Two  other  books  I  would  also  recom- 
mend: the  first  for  its  value  as  a  sum- 
mary of  Shakespeare's  life  and  his  work 
as  poet  and  dramatist;  the  second  for  its 
new  and  remarkable  presentment  of 
Shakespeare  the  man  as  evinced  by  his 
work. 

Mr.  Walter  Raleigh's  short  mono- 
graph on  Shakespeare  is  the  best  thing 
of  its  kind  in  the  language.  It  is  quite 
free  from  academic  pedantry  or  biblio- 
graphic dryasdustry,  failings  which  mar 
so  many  of  the  works  devoted  to  Shake- 
speare. Mr.  Raleigh  is  an  enthusiast, 
but  he  is  self-possessed,  ably  apprecia- 
tive, and  gently  judicious;  and  he  is  also 
gifted  with  a  style  of  writing  at  once 
captivating  and  suggestive. 
[147] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

Mr.  Frank  Harris's  The  Man  Shake- 
speare is  profoundly  interesting  as  an 
original  attempt  to  create  the  man  out  of 
the  material  collected  from  the  plays  and 
sonnets.  Whether  we  agree  or  no  with 
Mr.  Harris's  conclusions,  there  can  be 
no  question  of  the  extraordinary  interest 
excited  in  us  by  the  unique  treatment  he 
has  given  his  subject.  He  has  given  a 
new,  and  living,  and,  I  might  almost  say, 
a  sacred  value  to  the  writings  of  Shake- 
speare. No  reader  can  part  from  this 
book  without  obtaining,  at  the  same  time, 
a  vivid  mental  picture  of  what  Shake- 
speare may  have  been,  and,  perhaps, 
must  have  been  like.  It  is  a  remarkable 
achievement. 

Having    made    himself    familiar,    by 

means  of  these  books,  with  the  general 

outlines  of  Shakespeare's  life,  and  thus 

obtained  an  impression  of  the  spirit  in 

[148] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

which  he  wrote,  the  reader  will  be  pre- 
pared to  open  Shakespeare's  own  book. 
He  may  now  try  and  find  out  for  him- 
self what  the  world  sees  in  this  man  that 
is  so  transcendent,  and  what  of  truth 
there  is  in  the  judgment  which  declares 
him  to  be  the  finest  flower  of  human 
genius,  and  in  the  praise  that  descants  of 
his  infinite  power  to  delight  and  make 
wise. 

Opinion  has  so  dignified  Shakespeare 
that  he  "  sits  'mongst  men  like  a  de- 
scended god."  Opinion  is  not  quite  wise 
in  this  attitude.  We  shall  never  receive 
from  Shakespeare  what  his  writings  have 
to  give  us  if  we  give  way  to  the  tempta- 
tion, strong  as  it  undoubtedly  is  with  us 
common  folk,  to  apotheosize  the  man. 
We  are  somewhat  overfond  of  doing 
this,  and  we  lose  thereby  far  more  than 
we  gain.  If  Mr.  Harris's  book  do  no 
[149] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

more  than  shake  us  from  this  bad  habit, 
it  will  have  accomplished  much.  Shake- 
speare was  a  man,  and  spoke  our  lan- 
guage. He  knew  joys  similar  to  those 
we  know,  and  lived  through  sorrows 
common  to  humanity.  That  he  dealt 
with  these  joys  and  sorrows  in  the  fash- 
ion he  did,  proves  him  to  have  been  a  re- 
markably uncommon  man — but  still  a 
man.  Then  why  set  him  on  an  Olympus 
and  dream  of  him  as  though  he  were  a 
god's  disembodied  spirit  "  out-topping 
knowledge  "  ?  He  would  not  have  asked 
us  for  such  worship  had  we  known  him 
in  the  flesh.  Ben  Jonson  said  he  was 
"  of  an  open  and  free  nature,"  and  Ben 
Jonson  knew  him  better  than  did  any 
other  man  of  his  time.  Was  he  not  also 
called  "the  gentle  Shakespeare"?  He 
may  have  been  prone  to  melancholy;  his 
disposition  was  such  that  "above  all 
[150] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

other  strifes "  it  "  contended  especially 
to  know  himself,"  and  the  knowledge 
brought  him  its  wisdom.  He  says  so 
himself,  speaking  out  of  the  mouth  of 
Edgar  in  King  Lear,  and  the  beautiful 
words  reveal  Shakespeare  to  us: 

'*  A  most  poor  man,  made  tame  to  fortune9 s 

blows, 

Who  by  the  art  of  knowing  and  feelmg  sor- 
rows 
Am  pregnant  to  good  pity." 

With  the  Duke  in  Measure  for  Meas- 
ure, he  rather  rejoiced  "  to  see  another 
merry,  than  merry  at  anything  which 
professed  to  make  him  rejoice."  Like 
his  Hamlet,  he  was  "  most  generous  and 
free  from  all  contrivings."  There  was 
that  within  him  which  "  passeth  show," 
but  his  genius  was  equal  to  the  task  of 
revealing  it,  and  he  took  us  into  his  se- 
crets, treating  us  as  equals,  and  hiding 
[151] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

nothing  from  those  who  have  eyes  to  see 
and  hearts  to  feel: 

"  When  he  speaks, 

The  air,  a  chartered  libertine,  is  still, 
And  the  mute  wonder  lurketh  in  men's  ears 
To  steal  his  sweet  and  honey'd  sentences" 

His  life  was  spent  in  the  midst  of  the 
busy  world,  wearing  his  motley  as  an 
actor,  eating  his  meals  with  friends,  and 
drinking  with  them  also.  It  may  be  he 
was  speaking  of  himself  when  he  tells 
us  of  Henry  V: 

".    .    .    his  addiction  was  to  courses  vain; 
His  companions  unlettered,  rude,  and  shallow; 
His  hours  fill'd  up  with  riots,  banquets,  sports; 
And  never  noted  in  him  any  study, 
Any  retirement,  any  sequestration 
From  open  haunts  and  popularity" 

Actors  and  actor-companions,  in  those 
days,  were  not  of  the  best  society,  and 
few  of  them  could  be  called  cultured. 
[152] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

Nor  were  actors  then  in  the  happy  cir- 
cumstances they  are  in  to-day.  They  did 
not  knight  actors  in  the  Elizabethan  and 
Jacobean  times.  He  knew  a  nobleman 
or  two,  but  they  were  patrons,  not 
friends.  He  knew  better  the  Bardolphs, 
the  Nyms,  the  Pistols,  and  a  FalstafF; 
and  these  he  could  know  only  in  taverns 
and  in  "  open  haunts."  He  was  a  gen- 
erous, virile  lover,  loving  well  if  not 
wisely.  He  was  a  wit  among  his  friends 
at  the  Mermaid  tavern.  If  he  did  foolish 
things  in  the  heyday  of  his  young  man- 
hood, he  was  no  fool. 

It  is  to  do  Shakespeare  a  grievous 
wrong  and  ourselves  also,  to  relegate 
him,  as  we  do,  to  an  Alpine  loneliness  of 
royal  state.  We  take  him  away  from 
where  he  belongs;  from  the  press  of  the 
world's  fight,  and  from  the  hearts  of  the 
people.  His  book  also  we  have  wronged. 
[153] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

As  we  have  treated  the  Bible,  so  we  have 
made  an  idol  of  his  book,  and  have  sinned 
the  sin  of  idolatry.  Ben  Jonson  wor- 
shipped him  "  this  side  idolatry,"  but  we 
overstep  the  line.  Our  conduct  would  be 
less  open  to  criticism  did  we  really  act 
from  awful  conviction;  but  we  rarely 
read  his  book.  We  prefer  to  subscribe 
for  a  sumptuous  edition  of  his  works — 
the  more  sumptuous  the  better  for  our 
purpose — and  place  it  in  a  gilded  cage 
to  decorate  our  rooms.  Instead  of  know- 
ing the  man  and  filling  ourselves  from 
the  springs  of  his  wisdom  and  joy,  we 
accept  authority's  word,  and  take  for 
granted  the  man's  greatness  and  his 
book's  worth.  We  are  content  to  repeat 
the  scraps  of  borrowed  wisdom  which 
fall  from  the  lips  of  teachers  and  players. 
Were  we  acquainted  with  the  living  set- 
tings from  which  these  scraps  have  been 
[154] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

stolen  we  might,  perhaps,  be  touched  to 
fine  issues.  We  worship  in  blindness  and 
ignorance;  and  because  of  this  we  lose 
the  helping  sympathy  and  the  enriching 
experience  of  the  lordliest  joy-giver,  the 
wisest  spirit,  and  the  greatest-hearted 
man  who  ever  trod  this  earth.  It  is  time 
we  left  off  reading  what  other  people 
have  to  say  about  Shakespeare,  and  be- 
gan to  read  what  Shakespeare  has  to  say 
for  himself.  Let  us  give  up  atoning  for 
our  neglect  in  raising  monuments  to  him 
and  his  book.  We  never  can  build  a 
finer  monument  than  the  one  he  has  built 
for  himself: 

"  Not  marble  nor  the  gilded  monuments 
Of  princes  shall  outlive  this  powerful  rhyme." 

Let  us  atone  by  reading  his  book.    Let 
us  all — poor  and  rich  and  ignorant  as 
well  as  those  who  are  wise — justify  him 
in  what  he  said  to  his  friend: 
[155] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

"  Your  monument  shall  be  my  gentle  verse, 
Which  eyes  not  yet  created  shall  o'er  read; 
And  tongues  to  be  your  being  shall  rehearse, 
When  all  the  breathers  of  this  world  are  dead; 
You  still  shall  live — such  virtue  has  my  pen — 
Where    breath    most    breathes — even    in    the 
mouths  of  men" 

In  reading  Shakespeare  we  must  al- 
ways bear  in  mind  that  we  are  reading 
poems.  Shakespeare  was  far  more  a 
poet  than  he  was  a  dramatist.  We  are 
apt  to  forget  this  because  of  the  drama- 
forms,  and  because  the  persons  of  the 
play,  in  proportion  as  they  are  alive  for 
us,  for  the  moment,  interest  us  more  by 
what  they  are  doing  than  by  what  they 
are  saying.  A  second  or  a  third  reading 
may  help  to  dispel  this  illusion,  and  leave 
us  free  to  enjoy  the  poem,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  obtain  the  poetic  experiences. 
Reading  will  give  us  these  experiences, 
when  acting  would  not.  Lamb  con- 
[156] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

tended  that  "  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
are  less  calculated  for  performance  on  a 
stage  than  those  of  any  other  dramatist 
whatsoever."  And  he  was  right.  "  Their 
distinguished  excellence  is  a  reason 
that  they  should  be  so.  There  is  so 
much  in  them,  which  comes  not  under 
the  province  of  acting,  with  which  eye, 
and  tone,  and  gesture  have  nothing  to 
do." 

Exactly.  And  the  "  so  much  in  them  " 
is  the  poetry;  the  spirit  of  suggestion 
which  is  the  life  of  poetry;  the  spirit  that 
we  ourselves  must  alone  realize  and  ex- 
perience. The  actor  interferes  with  us  in 
this  work;  indeed  he  actually  opposes  us. 
And  he  is  but  doing  what  he  must  do,  if 
his  art  be  anything  to  him.  His  business 
is  to  express  as  perfectly  as  he  can  his 
own  art,  not  the  poem.  The  art  of  act- 
ing is  directed  mainly  to  the  eye,  and  but 
[157] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

slightly  to  the  imagination.  Where  it 
does  affect  the  imagination  it  is  taken  up 
with  suggestions  made  by  the  acting  and 
not  by  the  poem,  and  the  experiences  we 
have  from  these  suggestions  are  not  po- 
etic experiences.  The  two  are  entirely 
different.  When  we  try  to  obtain  both 
at  the  same  time  we  find  that  the  more 
immediate  coarser  impression  on  the  eye 
made  by  the  players,  overpowers  the 
more  delicate  impression  on  the  mind 
made  by  the  poem.  Scenery  also  is  an- 
other distracting  influence,  though  we 
are  not  affected  by  this  in  reading. 
Lamb  said,  that  scenery  "  works  quite  a 
contrary  effect  to  what  is  intended. 
That  which  in  comedy,  or  plays  of  fa- 
miliar life,  adds  so  much  to  the  life  of 
the  imitation,  in  plays  which  appeal  to 
the  higher  faculties,  positively  destroys 
the  illusion  which  it  is  intended  to  aid." 
[158] 


READING    SHAKESPEARE 

The  more  realistic  the  scenery  the  more 
is  the  eye  taken  up  with  it.  There  is  no 
time  in  the  quick  progress  of  the  play 
for  the  mind  to  do  more  than  respond  to 
what  the  eye  gives  it.  The  poem  as  poem 
is  scarcely  realized  at  all.  So  that  we 
leave  the  theatre  with  an  impression  of 
the  performance  and  not  of  the  poem. 
An  audience  in  Shakespeare's  time  had 
the  advantage  over  us.  All  it  saw  of  the 
scene  was  a  placard  reading  the  stage 
directions  now  printed  in  the  book  of 
the  plays,  thus :  "  Belmont,  Avenue  to 
Portia's  House,"  "  A  Room  in  Petru- 
chio's  House,"  "  The  Forest  of  Arden." 
The  imagination  was  appealed  to,  and 
left  the  mind  less  disturbed  in  its  work 
of  experiencing  the  poet's  art.  The  ac- 
tors, of  course,  had  to  be  there.  But  I 
would  go  so  far  as  to  do  away  even  with 
these,  at  any  rate  as  visible  to  the  au- 
[159] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

dience.  A  properly  lighted  theatre  with 
a  thin  dark-tinted  curtain  covering  the 
stage  opening,  and  the  actors  reading 
the  play  behind  the  curtain,  invisible  to 
the  eye,  would  be  all  that  were  necessary. 
I  believe  that  audiences  would  be  most 
deeply  impressed  by  thus  listening  to, 
say,  King  Lear,  Othello,  The  Tempest, 
Cymbeline,  or  even  Henry  IV  and  Rich- 
ard III,  if  competent  readers  were  se- 
lected for  the  fine  quality  of  their  voices. 
The  plays  would  come  as  revelations. 
Moreover,  we  could  then  hear  them  all, 
and  in  their  entirety,  not  emasculated 
and  shorn  of  half  their  virtue  by  igno- 
rant managers.  We  exercise  ourselves 
to  a  pitch  of  almost  rabid  excitement 
in  devising  clean  and  uplifting  pleasures 
to  be  enjoyed  on  our  deadly  Sundays.  I 
can  conceive  of  no  more  delightful  way 
in  which  to  spend  three  hours  out  of  the 
[160] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

barren  twelve  of  a  Sunday's  daylight, 
than  in  listening  to  such  a  reading  of  one 
of  Shakespeare's  plays.  The  plays  to 
be  known  must  be  lived  as  poems.  Since 
we  cannot  do  this  in  the  theatre,  let  us  do 
it  in  our  own  homes. 

In  the  previous  chapter  I  tried  to  sug- 
gest what  was  the  pleasure  poetry  gave 
us.  I  tried  to  show  that  the  poet's  aim,  if 
he  had  any  aim  at  all,  was  to  express  ex- 
perience so  that  we,  reading  the  poem, 
should  live  the  experience  as  he  lived  it. 
In  other  words,  the  measure  of  his  crea- 
tive imagination  was  found  to  be  in  the 
vividness  with  which  we  realized  the 
poet's  relation  with  the  ideal,  and  in  the 
strength  of  the  impulse  imparted  to  our 
imaginations  toward  the  realization  of 
truth  as  beauty.  This,  I  thought,  was 
the  purpose  of  poetry,  if  poetry  had  any 
purpose. 

[161] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

How  does  Shakespeare  fulfil  this  in 
us? 

If  the  sonnets  tell  us  anything  they 
tell  us  that  Shakespeare  lived  through  a 
tragedy  of  his  own.  To  think  of  the 
sonnets  otherwise  is  to  reckon  him  a 
dilettante  in  verse.  The  tragedy  must 
have  shaken  him  in  every  fibre  of  his 
being — the  sonnets  show  us  that.  It  af- 
fected a  naturally  gentle  nature  to  a 
sweet  melancholy  that  found  its  expres- 
sion through  those  higher  natures  he 
created  in  his  plays,  for  whom  life  of- 
fered problems  to  be  solved.  In  the 
sonnets,  this  tragedy  expresses  itself  first 
as  the  agonizing  cry  of  a  deeply  wounded 
man;  in  the  end  it  affected  the  man  to 
a  beautiful  confession  of  the  grace  that 
Love  had  blessed  him  with.  Love  had 
been  his  sin,  he  said,  but  Love  had  re- 
deemed him.  In  the  process  of  this 
[162] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

redemption  the  supreme  lyric  power  in 
him  had  "  changed  the  tear  to  a  pearl, 
which  remains  to  decorate  new  sorrows." 
In  this  exquisite  sentence  Professor  Ra- 
leigh holds  the  sonnets  in  solution.  His 
continuing  words  most  finely  precipitate 
their  spirit:  "  Their  occasion  is  a  thing  of 
the  past:  their  theme  is  eternal.  The 
tragedy  of  which  they  speak  is  the  topic 
and  inspiration  of  all  poetry,  it  is  the 
triumph  of  Time,  marching  relentlessly 
over  the  ruin  of  human  ambitions 
and  human  desires."  Shakespeare  was 
made  of  no  common  stuff.  He  had  a 
resolved  spirit  in  him,  and  the  work  he 
did  later  justified  him  in  the  defiance 
and  resolution  expressed  in  the  son- 
net:— 

'*  No,   Time,   thou  shalt  not  boast  that  I  do 

change: 
Thy  pyramids  built  up  "with  newer  might 

[163] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

To  me  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange; 
They  are  but  dressings  of  a  former  sight. 
Our  dates  are  brief,  and  therefore  we  admire 
What  thou  dost  foist  upon  us  that  is  old; 
And  rather  make  them  born  to  our  desire 
Than  think  that  we  before  have  heard  them 

told. 

Thy  registers  and  thee  I  both  defy, 
Not  wondering  at  the  present  nor  the  past, 
For  thy  records  and  what  we  see  doth  lie, 
Made  more  or  less  by  thy  continual  haste. 

This  I  do  vow  and  this  shall  ever  be; 

I  will  be  true,  despite  thy  scythe  and  thee." 

His  love  shall  endure,  he  avers,  in  the 
sonnet  previous  to  this,  because  it  is  not 
"  subject  to  Time's  love  or  to  Time's 
hate."  No,  "  it  was  builded  far  from  ac- 
cident," and  will  not  fall  "  under  the 
blow  of  thralled  discontent " ;  nor  does 
it  fear  policy,  "  that  heretic,  which  works 
on  leases  of  short-number'd  hours," 

"  But  all  alone  stands  hugely  politic, 
That  it  nor  grows  with  heat  nor  drowns  with 
showers. 

[164] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

To  this  I  witness  call  the  fools  of  time, 
Which  die  for  goodness,  who  have  lived  for 
crime." 

"  When  I  was  a  child,  I  spoke  as  a 
child,  I  felt  as  a  child,  I  thought  as  a 
child:  now  that  I  am  become  a  man,  I 
have  put  away  childish  things."  Shake- 
speare, in  his  sonnets,  had  sung  himself 
into  manhood.  This  is  the  way  of  the 
poet — to  accept  the  bludgeonings  of  cir- 
cumstance and  to  remain  captain  of  his 
soul.  Then  out  of  his  sorrow  to  create  a 
joy,  a  living  object,  "  a  wonderful  death- 
less ditty "  to  move  us  to  fashion  our 
glory  also ;  "  the  tear  changed  to  a  pearl, 
which  remains  to  decorate  new  sorrows." 

The  poet  is  greater  than  his  poems; 
for  a  poem  is  but  one  moment's  orna- 
ment, while  the  poet,  impregnated  by 
every  emanation  of  nature's  activity,  is 
ever  conceiving.  He  only  waits  that  he 
[165] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

may  deliver  the  new  life  as  a  thing  of 
beauty.  So  fecund  is  he  that  the  body 
becomes  worn  out  long  before  the  spirit 
has  completed  its  song  cycle.  The  man 
Shakespeare  died  young,  as  we  count 
years,  yet  his  last  work  was  greater  than 
his  first,  and  all  were  the  product  of  a 
spirit  that  seemed  to  revel  in  its  super- 
human power  of  combining  elements 
into  new  and  beautiful  compounds.  Al- 
ways it  is  the  poet  singing — of  love  and 
its  joys  and  sorrows,  of  the  play  of  cir- 
cumstance on  the  human  effort,  of  vic- 
tory and  defeat,  of  emancipation  from 
the  thraldom  of  sense  and  of  the  thral- 
dom itself — but  always  singing.  This 
lyric  character  in  him  is  important,  be- 
cause it  is  Shakespeare's  own  voice.  The 
lyrical  voice  is  always  the  personality  it- 
self speaking.  He  imparts  it  to  the  men 
and  women  of  his  plays.  In  whatsoever 
[166] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

circumstances  they  may  be,  they  no 
sooner  feel  the  stress  of  life  or  the  joy 
of  it,  than  the  poet  asserts  himself  in 
them  and  they  speak  the  lyrical  lan- 
guage. Othello  in  the  net  of  lago's 
Mephistophelian  weaving  literally  chants 

his  agony: 

"  Like  to  the  Pontic  Sea, 
Whose  Icy  current  and  compulsive  course 
Ne'er  feels  retiring  ebb.,  but  keeps  due  on 
To  the  Propontic  and  the  Hellespont, 
Even  so  my  bloody  thoughts,  with  violent  pace, 
Shall  ne'er  look  back,  ne'er  ebb  to  humble  love, 
Till  that  a  capable  and  wide  revenge 
Swallow  them  up" 

Then,  later,  when  he  has  realized  the 
weakness  of  his  own  soul  before  a  com- 
mon intriguer's  suggestions: 

"  Are  there  no  stones  in  heaven 
But  what  serves  for  the  thunder  .... 

*  *        * 

/  am  not  valiant  neither, 
But  every  puny  whipster  gets  my  sword. 

*  *        * 
[167] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF. 

Who  can  control  his  fate? 

•       *       * 

O  cursed,  cursed  slave! 
Whip  me,  ye  devils, 

From  the  possession  of  this  heavenly  sight! 
Blow  me  about  in  winds!    Roast  me  m  sulphur! 
Wash  me  in  steep-down  gulfs  of  liquid  fire! 
O  Desdemona!  dead,  Desdemona,  dead!  " 

King  Lear,  in  his  terrible  madness, 
rises  to  the  height  of  the  poet's  Voice 
from  the  Whirlwind,  which  spoke  to  Job : 

"  Blow  winds,   and  crack  your  cheeks!  rage! 

blow! 

You  cataracts  and  hurricanes,  spout 
Till  you  have  drenched  our  steeples,  drown'd 

the  cocks! 

You  sulphurous  and  thought-executing  fires, 
Vaunt  couriers  to  oak-cleaving  thunderbolts, 
Singe  my  white  beard.     And  thou,  all-shak- 
ing thunder, 

Smite  flat  the  thick  rotundity  of  the  world! 
Crack  nature's  moulds,  all  germens  spill  at 

once, 
That  make  ingrateful  man" 

[168] 


READING  SHAKESPEARE 

And  Edgar's  words: 

"  The  gods  are  just,  and  of  our  pleasant  vices 
Make  instruments  to  plague  us." 

Macbeth,  after  he  has  killed  Duncan, 
asks  his  wife  why  he  could  not  say 
"  Amen  "  to  the  prayers  he  heard  in  the 
second  chamber.  He  scarcely  hears  her 
answer,  but  wanders  off  into  a  song  in 
praise  of  sleep: 

"  Methought  I  heard  a  voice  say  *  Sleep  no 

more! 
Macbeth    does    murder    sleep,'    the    innocent 

sleep, 

Sleep  that  knits  up  the  ravell'd  sleave  of  care, 
The  death  of  each  day's  life,  sore  labour's 

bath, 
Balm  of  hurt  minds,  great  nature's  second 

course, 
Chief  nourisher  in  life's  feast." 

When  Macbeth  hears  of  his  wife's  death, 

the  news  sends  him  soliloquizing  a  psalm : 

[169] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

"  To-morrow,  and  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow, 
Creeps  in  this  petty  space  from  day  to  day 
To  the  last  syllable  of  recorded  time; 
And  all  our  yesterdays  have  lighted  fools 
The  way   to  dusty  death.      Out,    out,    brief 

candle! 

That  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage 
And  then  is  heard  no  more.    It  is  a  tale 
Told  by  an  idiot,  full  of  sound  and  fury, 
Signifying  nothing" 

Hamlet  is  always  singing  under  the 
stress  of  conflicting  thoughts.  Jaques, 
the  melancholy  onlooker  at  life's  merry- 
making, sings  his  reflections.  Duke 
Vincentio,  in  Measure  for  Measure, 
waiting  expectantly  for  Isabel  and 
Mariana  to  come  to  an  understanding, 
is  moved  to  a  chanting  exclamation 
against  the  city,  so  full  of  wickedness, 
over  which  he  reigns : 

"  O  place  and  greatness!  millions  of  false  eyes 
Are  stuck  upon  thee:  volumes  of  report 

[170] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

Run  with  these  false  and  most  contrarious 

quests 

Upon  thy  doings:  thousands  escapes  of  wit 
Make  thee  the  father  of  their  idle  dreams 
And  rack  in  thee  their  fancies" 

This  same  lyrical  impulse  seizes  Shake- 
speare when  he  writes  of  what  moves  him 
deeply,  of  what  affected  his  nature  most 
profoundly.  Music,  women,  love  ap- 
pealed to  him  so  strongly  that  the  strings 
of  his  heart-lyre  were  instantly  set  vibrat- 
ing. He  never  refers  to  music,  but  his 
language  expresses  the  very  refinement 
of  poetic  experience: 

"  How  sweet   the  moonlight  sleeps  upon  this 

bank! 

Here  will  we  sit,  and  let  the  sounds  of  music 
Creep  in  our  ears;  soft  stillness  and  the  night 
Become  the  touches  of  sweet  harmony. 
Sit,  Jessica:  Look  how  the  -floor  of  heaven 
Is  thick  inlaid  with  patines  of  bright  gold. 
There's  not  the  smallest  orb  which  thou  be- 
holdest 

[171] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

But  in  his  motion  like  an  angel  sings, 
Still  quiring  to  the  young-eyed  cherubwns, 
Such  harmony  is  m  immortal  souls; 
But  whilst  this  muddy  vesture  of  decay 
Doth  grossly  close  it  in,  we  cannot  hear  it.** 

Note  the  reflective,  melancholy  Shake- 
speare coming  in  at  the  close  of  the  poet's 
rhapsody.  Compare  this  again  with  the 
Duke's  words,  in  Twelfth  Night,  on  the 
same  subject,  and  note  the  delicacy  of 
the  appetite  which  will  not  be  cloyed: — 

"  If  music  be  the  food  of  love,  play  on; 
Give  me  excess  of  it,  that  surfeiting 
The  appetite  may  sicken,  and  so  die. 
That  strain  again; — it  had  a  dying  fall: 
Oh,  it  came  o'er  my  ears  like  the  sweet  south 
That  breathes  upon  a  bank  of  violets, 
Stealing  and  giving  odour, — Enough!     No 

more, 
'Tis  not  so  sweet  now  as  it  was  before." 

Woman  and  the  beauty  in  woman  were, 

perhaps,   Shakespeare's  most  potent  in- 

[172] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

spirations.  He  delighted  to  sing  her 
praise,  and  revelled  in  every  manifesta- 
tion of  her  grace  and  fine  spirit.  There 
is  such  feeling  in  his  language  that  "  his 
words  are  bonds "  binding  him  to  the 
thing,  and  "  his  oaths  oracles  "  telling  of 
his  heart's  deepest  pulses: — 

"  0,  she  doth  teach  the  torches  to  burn  bright! 
Her  beauty  hangs  upon  the  cheek  of  night 
Like  a  rich  jewel  in  an  Ethiop's  ear; 
Beauty  too  rich  for  use,  for  earth  too  dear!  " 

Thus  Romeo  of  Juliet.  Then  Othello  of 
Desdemona : 

"  Thou  cunning'st  pattern  of  excelling  nature, 
I  know  not  where  is  that  Promethean  heat 
That  can  thy  light  relume.     When  I  have 

pluck'd  the  rose, 

I  cannot  give  it  vital  growth  agam, 
It  needs  must  wither: — I'll  smell  it  on  the 

tree. 

Ah,  balmy  breath,  that  dost  almost  persuade 
Justice  to  break  her  sword." 

[173] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

What  Cleopatra's  beauty  was  like  may 
be  imagined  from  Enorbarbus's  words: 

**  Age  cannot  wither  her,  nor  custom  stale 
Her  infinite  variety:  other  'women  cloy 
The    appetites    they    feed:    but    she    makes 

hungry 
Where  most  she  satisfies" 

lachimo,  in  Imogen's  sleeping-chamber, 
turns  poet  at  the  sight  of  the  beauty  and 
purity  of  the  lovely  lady  lying  asleep: 

"  Cytherea, 

How  bravely  thou  becomest  thy  bed,  fresh  lily, 
And  whiter  than  the  sheets.  That  I  might 

touch! 

But  kiss;  one  kiss!    Rubies  unparagon'd 
How   dearly    they   do't!      'Tis   her   breathmg 

that 
Perfumes  the  chamber  thus!  the  fiame  o'  the 

taper 
Bows  toward  her,  and  would  under-peep   her 

lids, 

To  see  the  enclosed  lights,  now  canopied 
Under  these  windows,  white  and  azure-laced 
With  blue  of  heaven's  own  tint." 

[174] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare  must  have  had  a  large 
slice  of  his  mother  in  him;  for  if  there  is 
one  characteristic  in  his  writings  that  is 
stronger  than  the  many  others  they  dis- 
play, it  is  his  finely  delicate  appreciation 
of  women.  He  writes  of  them  in  living 
words,  and  they  talk  living  words.  lago 
is  a  piece  of  intellectualization,  astonish- 
ingly realized  and  terribly  clever;  but  we 
feel  instinctively  that  this  villain  is  an 
elaboration  and  not  a  creation.  Imogen 
springs,  like  Aphrodite  from  the  foam, 
straight  out  of  the  poet's  throbbing 
heart.  She  comes,  inevitable,  splendid 
in  all  her  beauty  of  form  and  soul,  as 
though  she  had  stepped  out  of  a  living 
past  into  the  living  present.  All  Shake- 
speare's women,  except  perhaps  Lady 
Macbeth,  possess  this  radiance  of  im- 
mortality. They  seem  as  if  they  had 
never  been  dead,  as  if  Shakespeare  had 
[175] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

just  simply  recovered  them  for  us.  This 
supreme  power  came  from  something 
more  than  the  workings  of  the  mere 
imagination  with  the  stuff  of  experience 
— though  experience,  of  course,  was 
vital.  The  man's  own  nature,  it  must 
have  been,  that  contributed  to  the  crea- 
tion of  such  women  as  Marina,  Imogen, 
Cordelia,  Rosalind,  Miranda,  and  Cleo- 
patra. Shakespeare's  women  bear  wit- 
ness to  Shakespeare's  transcendent 
creative  might;  but  they  give  more,  a 
golden  -  tongued  testimony  for  Shake- 
speare's kindly,  tender  and  sympathetic 
heart — the  large  slice  of  Mary  Arden 
that  was  in  him.  As  the  poet  of  love 
Shakespeare  is  peerless.  There  is  no  se- 
cret recess  in  it  that  he  has  not  rifled  of 
its  riches  with  which  to  fill  the  chalices  of 
his  flowers  of  love.  A  volume  might  be 
made  of  these  flowers  alone.  I  need 
[176] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

quote  but  two:  in  the  first,  Biron,  in 
Love's  Labour's  Lost,  is  speaking  for 
Shakespeare: 

"  Oilier  slow  arts  entirely  keep  the  brain; 
And  therefore,  finding  barren  practisers, 
Scarce  show  a  harvest  of  their  heavy  toil: 
But  love  first  learned  in  a  lady's  eyes, 
Lives  not  alone  immured  in  the  brain; 
But,  with  the  motion  of  all  elements, 
Courses  as  swift  as  thought  in  every  fiower, 
And  gives  to  every  power  a  double  power, 
Above  their  functions  and  their  offices. 
It  adds  a  precious  seeing  to  the  eye; 
A  lover's  eyes  will  gaze  an  eagle  blind; 
A  lover's  ear  will  hear  the  lowest  sound, 
When  the  suspicious  head  of  theft  is  stopp'd; 
Love's  feeling  is  more  soft  and  sensible 
Than  are  the  tender  horns  of  cockled  snails; 
Love's  tongue  proves  dainty  Bacchus  gross  in 

taste; 

For  valour,  is  not  Love  a  Hercules, 
Still  climbing  trees  in  the  Hesperides? 
Subtle  as  Sphinx;  as  sweet  and  musical 
As  bright  Apollo's  lute,  strung  wth  his  hair; 
And  when  Love  speaks,  the  voice  of  all  the 

gods, 

[177] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

Makes  heaven  drowsy  with  the  Tiarmony. 
Never  durst  poet  touch  a  pen  to  write 
Until  his  ink  were  tempered  with  Love's  sighs; 
O,  then  his  lines  would  ravish  savage  ears 
And  plant  in  tyrants  mild  humility." 

Phebe  says  to  Silvius,  in  As  You  Like 
It:  "  Good  shepherd,  tell  this  youth  what 
'tis  to  love,"  and  Silvius  answers: 

"  It  is  to  be  all  made  of  sighs  and  tears; 

•  *        * 

It  is  to  be  all  made  of  faith  and  service; 

*  *       * 

It  is  to  be  all  made  of  fantasy, 

All  made  of  passion  and  all  made  of  wishes, 

All  adoration,  duty,  and  observance, 

All  humbleness,  all  patience  and  impatience, 

All  purity,  all  trial,  all  observance." 

I  dwell  on  Shakespeare  the  poet  because 
it  helps  us  to  realize  the  man.  Poets  are 
poets  because  they  have  been  men  first; 
men  who  have  known  sorrow  and  were 
acquainted  with  grief.  Here  we  touch 
[178] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

hands  with  them,  and  the  touch  is  en- 
couraging ;  because  how  great  spirits  have 
met  fate  is  good  for  us  lesser  spirits  to 
know.  In  his  poetry  also  the  poet  feels 
himself  freer  to  confess;  his  art  permits 
him  a  larger  liberty  to  lay  bare  the  hid- 
den springs  of  his  nature  with  dignity 
and  without  egotism.  It  is  nothing  to 
the  purpose  to  say  that  a  poet  might  as- 
sume an  experience  and  write  from  the 
assumption  as  if  it  were  native  to  him. 
Such  writings  have  sent  many  poets  into 
"  the  wastes  of  time."  The  experience 
must  be  personal  and  real  or  the  poem  is 
a  dead  thing.  It  is  in  his  poems  that  the 
man  Shakespeare  is  to  be  found,  and 
there  is  a  fine  pleasure  in  searching  for 
him  there,  and  rare  treasures  are  to  be 
found  by  the  way. 

I  dwell  particularly  on  the  lyric  qual- 
ity of  Shakespeare's  poetry,  because,  as 
[179] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

I  have  already  said,  it  points  to  the  per- 
sonal note.  It  is  even  more  encourag- 
ing to  see  the  profoundest  searcher  of 
life  singing,  not  alone  of  his  joy,  but  of 
his  sorrows  also.  This  debonair  grace  is 
heartily  impressing.  Heavy-laden  as  we 
are,  we  can  here  find  rest.  Surely  there 
shall  be  time  to  listen  and  take  heart  if 
such  a  man  finds  the  time  to  sing  to  give 
us  heart!  So  that  there  is  a  fine  pleasure 
also  in  listening.  This  world  may  be 
foul  in  body  and  infected  in  nature,  but 
give  Shakespeare  the  opportunity  and  he 
will  cleanse  the  one  and  heal  the  other. 
What  says  his  friend  Jaques? — 

*l  Invest  me  in  my  motley;  give  me  leave 

To  speak  my  mind,  and  I  will  through  and 

through 

Cleanse  the  foul  body  of  the  infected  world, 
If  they  will  patiently  receive  my  medicine" 

Mr.  Frank  Harris,  in  his  richly  sug- 
[180] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

gestive  book  to  which  I  have  referred, 
writing  of  this  lyric  character  in  Shake- 
speare's earlier  plays,  goes  on  to  re- 
mark : — 

'  There  is  no  intenser  delight  to  a  lover 
of  letters  than  to  find  Shakespeare  sing- 
ing, with  happy  unconcern,  of  the  things 
he  loved  best — not  the  Shakespeare  of 
Hamlet  or  Macbeth,  whose  intellect 
speaks  in  critical  judgments  of  men  and 
life,  and  whose  heart  we  are  fain  to  di- 
vine from  slight  indications;  nor  Shake- 
speare the  dramatist,  who  tried  now  and 
again  to  give  life  to  puppets  like  Corio- 
lanus  and  lago,  with  whom  he  had  little 
sympathy — but  Shakespeare  the  poet, 
Shakespeare  the  lover,  Shakespeare  whom 
Ben  Jonson  called  *  the  gentle/  Shake- 
speare the  sweet-hearted  singer,  as  he 
lived  and  suffered  and  enjoyed."  This 
is  the  Shakespeare  we  want  to  know — 
[181] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF, 

the  man  with  the  gentle  heart,  not  the 
man  with  the  mighty  intellect;  the  man 
who,  out  of  the  deeps  of  his  life's  tur- 
moil, could  rise  to  be  joyous;  and  to  do 
this  not  in  any  specious  way,  but  because 
he  truly  made  his  joy  out  of  the  very 
wreck  of  experience. 

Much  has  been  written  on  the  pessim- 
ism of  Shakespeare;  but  the  student  of 
his  works  will  easily  convince  himself 
that  the  pessimism  was  but  a  temporary 
phase  and  was  not  organic  in  the  man's 
nature.  Melancholy  he  may  have  been, 
and  reflective  and  retiring;  but  a  pes- 
simist, never.  There  was  that  period  in 
his  life  in  which  he  wrote  the  Sonnets, 
and  the  great  tragedies  of  Hamlet, 
Othello,  King  Lear  and  Macbeth.  But 
he  had  written  Henry  IV,  As  You  Like 
It,  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  and  The 
Tempest.  What  had  happened  to  him 
[182] 


READING  SHAKESPEARE 

was  not  a  change  of  heart,  but  a  change 
of  experience.  It  is  true,  the  experience 
opened  his  eyes  to  the  meanness,  the  base- 
ness, the  hypocrisy,  the  infidelity  in  men 
and  women,  the  corruption  in  political 
life,  and  the  wretched  falsity  in  friend- 
ship; but  these  did  not  sour  him;  they 
rather  helped  to  ripen  his  great  soul. 
The  trials  over,  he  resumed  the  divine  se- 
renity of  his  gracious  nature. 

The  tragic  experiences  that  befell 
Shakespeare  are  common  to  humanity. 
It  is  the  cross  we  all  have  to  bear.  Some 
are  not  able  to  bear  it,  and  fall  by  the 
wayside;  others  go  on  stumbling,  with  an 
ill  grace,  under  the  load  and  reach  the 
goal  with  spirits  worn  out  and  nature 
crabbed.  The  poet's  fine  nature,  how- 
ever, is  touched  to  finer  issues.  He 
marches  to  his  music  and  puts  his  agony 
into  a  song.  It  is  well  for  us  that  he  can 
[183] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

so  control  the  tendencies  of  his  passions 
that  they  flow  into  the  moulds  of  art  and 
take  on  the  forms  of  beauty.  Otherwise 
we  should  never  have  learned  how  to  look 
up.  Lesser  spirits  can  but  cry  out  inar- 
ticulately, so  that  we  rarely  understand 
what  they  say;  but  a  poet  like  Shake- 
speare is  eloquent  to  the  ages.  He  rouses 
us  by  the  reverberating  might  of  his  re- 
silient words,  and  the  sound  is  sent  echo- 
ing along  the  corridors  of  Time. 

To  me  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare 
are  not  so  much  criticisms  of  life  in  gen- 
eral, as  they  are  criticisms  of  Shake- 
speare himself.  Each  of  them  turns  on 
some  weakness  in  the  character  of  the 
protagonist;  and  weakness  in  character 
is,  after  all,  at  the  foundation  of  all  hu- 
man tragedies.  In  Hamlet  I  see  "  gen- 
tle "  Shakespeare's  unstableness  which 
shall  not  prevail.  In  Othello  I  find  love- 
[184] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

impassioned  Shakespeare  sending  the 
jealousy  in  his  nature  to  ride  alone  to 
the  ultimate  destruction  of  the  whole 
man.  In  Timon,  I  see  let  loose  an  un- 
bridled rage  against  the  falseness  and 
the  sycophancy  in  the  world  experienced 
by  a  man  who  was  "  of  a  free  and  open 
nature."  In  King  Lear  I  meet  the  trust- 
ful Shakespeare  and  the  lover  Shake- 
speare, made  mad  by  the  world's  ingrati- 
tude, by  the  evil  in  it,  by  the  wretchedness 
and  misery  in  it,  by  the  terrible  suffer- 
ing in  it.  His  heart  is  so  filled  with  mixed 
feelings  of  compassion  and  rage  that  the 
tears  from  his  eyes  scald  him  like  molten 
lead.  Even  a  woman's  love  comes  too 
late  for  him.  The  voice  that  "  was  ever 
soft,  gentle  and  low  "  also  goes  "  into  the 
wastes  of  time." 

Shakespeare  saved  himself  from  any 
one  of  the  catastrophes  he  pictures,  by 
[185] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

the  qualities  of  his  nature — in  particular 
by  his  poetic  genius.  What  he  might 
have  done  without  this  genius,  we  may 
read  in  the  biographies  of  the  world's 
lesser  men  who  were  also  finely  touched. 
Shakespeare's  genius  sent  him  working 
with  the  stuff  of  his  experience  and  self- 
knowledge  into  forms  of  art,  so  that  he 
objectified  his  passions  as  poems  of  trag- 
edy. He  precipitated  his  own  tragedy  in 
imagination,  and  thus  recovered  himself 
from  himself.  In  this  recovery  he  saw 
himself  as  the  protagonist  of  these  im- 
aginatively created  dramas  of  life,  and 
thus  realized  what  part  he  might  have 
played  in  life's  own  play  had  he  given 
way  and  become  Time's  fool.  He  thus 
also  found  himself, 

"  A  most  poor  man,  made  tame  to  fortune's 
blows; 

[186] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

Who,  by  the  art  of  known  and  feeling  sorrows, 
Am  pregnant  to  good  pity." 

O,  rare  virtue!  He  saw  with  a  clearness 
of  insight  such  as  only  he  possessed  the 
supreme  virtue  to  cultivate,  if  life  is  to 
be  lived  in  masterly  self-possession  and 
yet  be  fruitful  in  joy: — 

"  Men  must  endure 

Their  going  hence,  even  as  their  coming  hither: 
Ripeness  is  all." 

"  Ripeness  is  all!  "  That  is  the  splen- 
did jewel  in  Shakespeare's  crown.  From 
its  myriad  facets  the  light  radiates  to  dis- 
sipate the  darkness  in  which  we  all  grope 
through  life's  way. 

We  may  be  "  such  stuff  as  dreams  are 
made  on  " ;  yet,  after  all,  if  the  dreams 
are  all  we  know  of  life,  they  are  real  to 
us.  If 

"  The  cloud-capped  towers,  the  gorgeous  pal- 
aces, 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself t" 

[187] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

the  ever-changing  beauty  of  landscape 
and  of  sky,  the  ever-drawing  powers  of 
human  sympathy  and  human  love;  if  all 
these  things  be  but  a  vision  in  a  sleep ;  yet 
if  we  know  no  awakening,  the  vision  is 
the  reality.  Are  we  then  really  dream- 
ing? Is  it  all  a  vision?  Shakespeare's 
own  life  answers  the  question  in  the 
negative.  He,  the  poet,  the  awakened 
dreamer,  came  and  touched  us  and  bade 
us  rise  and  look  around  and  see  whether 
or  no  this  insubstantial  pageant  has  in 
truth  vanished  and  left  not  a  wrack  be- 
hind. We  rub  our  eyes  and  in  conscious 
astonishment  begin  to  realize  that  here  is 
a  new  revelation  of  things;  that  our 
dreams  were  not  a  tithe  as  real  as  are 
these  wonderful  beauties  we  see.  Their 
outlines  are  the  same  as  those  we  saw  in 
our  dream-visions,  but  they  have  taken 
on  living  glories,  as  it  were.  Landscape 
[188] 


READING  SHAKESPEARE 

and  sky,  towers  and  palaces  and  temples, 
friend  and  lover  and  brother,  all  are 
transfigured  in  a  new  and  magical  light. 
What  has  happened?  Only  this — the 
poet  has  recreated  our  dream-visions  by 
the  power  of  his  creative  imagination,  so 
that  what  we  saw  in  our  dreams  as  sepa- 
rate, are  now  in  living  relation — we  are 
beginning  to  realize  the  poet's  experience 
in  our  own  experience.  Then  we  saw  as 
in  a  glass  darkly,  now  we  know  the  joy  of 
living. 

Shakespeare  was  right,  however.  We 
are  dreaming.  We  allow  the  procession 
of  Time's  glory  to  march  past  us  to  the 
music  of  a  Dead  Man's  March  in  us.  It 
moves  before  us  as  a  Dance  of  Death; 
we  the  while  looking  on  as  shadowy  spec- 
tres, or  sleep-walkers.  It  is  all  dark, 
meaningless,  unlovely.  And  it  will  re- 
main thus  for  us  so  long  as  we  remain 
[189] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

deaf  to  the  voice  of  the  poet.  Let  him 
be  no  longer  as  one  crying  in  the  wilder- 
ness. Let  him  not  abjure  his  service,  or 
break  his  staff,  or  drown  his  book.  Let 
us  accept  his  service  and  the  help  of  his 
support,  and  let  us  treasure  the  book  in 
our  hearts,  that  it  may  fill  us  with  its 
joyous  spirit.  He  offered  all  with  the 
royal  freedom  of  his  bounteous  nature: 

"  Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 
Admit  impediments.    Love  is  not  love 
Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds, 
Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove: — 
O  no!  it  is  an  ever-fixed  marie 
That  looks  on  tempests  and  is  never  shaken; 
It  is  the  star  to  every  wandering  bark, 
Whose  worth's  unknown,  although  his  height 

be  taken; 
Love's  not  Time's  fool,  though  rosy  lips  and 

cheeks 

Within  his  bending  sickle's  compass  come; 
Love  alters  not  with  his  brief  hours  and  weeks, 
But  bears  it  out  ev'n  to  the  edge  of  doom: — 

[190] 


READING   SHAKESPEARE 

If  this  be  error,  and  upon  me  proved, 
I  never  writ,  nor  no  man  ever  loved." 

Would  you  search  further  into  this  man's 
worth;  into  this  poet's  pleasure-giving 
power?  If  you  would,  there  is  but  one 
thing  for  you  to  do — read  what  he  has 
written. 

If  I  were  looking  for  a  foundation  on 
which  to  build  a  faith  in  the  existence  of 
the  soul  and  its  immortality,  I  should  not 
seek  for  it  in  the  fine-spun  arguments  of 
schoolmen  and  philosophers.  I  should 
find  it  at  once  in  the  living  power  of  the 
poet's  creative  imagination.  All  Plato's 
reasonings  pale  into  insignificance  beside 
Plato  himself.  He  is  himself  the  most 
convincing  of  all  arguments.  And  Plato 
was  less  than  Shakespeare. 


[191] 


V 

THE     PLEASURE     OF 
READING   NOVELS 


THE   PLEASURE   OF   READING 
NOVELS 

HE  novelist,  in  so  far  as  his 
work  is  the  product  of  his 
creative  imagination,  is,  more 
or  less,  a  poet.  His  method,  how- 
ever, is  quite  different  from  the  poet's. 
The  poet  sings ;  he  is  a  musician  as  well  as 
a  creator.  The  poet  reveals  visions;  he 
relates  the  separated  things  of  life  in  a 
unity  with  an  ideal.  His  art  is  to  pro- 
duce in  us  his  own  experiences  of  har- 
mony and  beauty.  The  novelist  is  not  a 
singer;  he  is  a  narrator.  He  is  not  con- 
cerned with  an  ideal.  His  language  is 
the  prose  of  the  single  voice  speaking  of 
what  is  now,  or  picturing  what  was  once 
so  that  it  shall  seem  to  he  now.  His  aim 
[195] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

is  to  tell  the  facts  of  common  experience 
in  such  wise  as  to  produce  in  us  an  illu- 
sion— an  illusion  that  shall  affect  us  as 
the  reality,  and  that  may  so  work  on  the 
imagination  as  to  give  pleasure.  This  is, 
or  should  be,  his  only  aim;  other  aims 
must  tend  to  deteriorate  his  art.  He 
may  point  a  moral — political,  social,  re- 
ligious— but  if  his  moral  obtrude  itself 
so  that  it  overshadows  his  picture  of  life 
or  his  presentation  of  character,  he  is  no 
longer  the  artist,  he  is  the  moralist  or  re- 
former. A  teller  of  tales  must  be  a  giver 
of  pleasure  through  the  power  and  charm 
of  his  illusions. 

Before  language  had  freed  itself  from 
the  fetters  of  sense;  that  is  to  say,  when 
men  and  women  still  called  things  by 
names  which  reflected  their  personal  re- 
lationship to  them,  the  poetical  experi- 
ence was  the  common  experience.  As 
[196] 


READING  NOVELS 

with  children,  the  ideal  qualities  ascribed 
to  things  were  associated  with  the  words 
which  stood  for  the  things;  so  that  lan- 
guage was  poetry.  The  poet,  or  the 
minstrel,  was  then  the  teller  of  tales. 
His  songs  told  of  the  deeds  of  great 
heroes,  their  loves,  their  sorrows,  their 
joys,  their  battles  and  conquests.  He 
tried  to  make  them  as  real  as  he  knew 
how.  That  the  creative  imagination  in 
him  sent  him  doing  other  things  with  his 
facts  and  made  poems  out  of  his  tales 
was  inevitable,  since  that  was  the  only 
way  in  which  he  could  tell  his  tale  at  all. 
His  child-like  imagination  weaved  make- 
believes  that  were  the  reality.  The  Bib- 
lical writers,  Homer,  Virgil,  the  authors 
of  the  Scandinavian  Sagas  and  Beowulf 
were  tellers  of  tales.  So  were  the  trou- 
badours, the  authors  of  the  Romaunt  of 
the  Rose  and  the  Song  of  Roland,  Chau- 
[197] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

cer  and  Spenser.  As  tale-tellers  they 
charmed  the  listener  or  the  reader  to  the 
experience  of  pleasure,  by  producing  an 
illusion  which  the  imagination  accepted 
as  the  reality. 

Since  those  days  language  has  under- 
gone a  complete  change.  As  life  became 
more  real  and  stern  words  lost  their  po- 
etic associations.  The  relations  they 
originally  suggested  to  things  were  di- 
vorced, just  as  have  been  divorced  the 
relations  in  which  we  ourselves  stood  to 
the  world  of  things.  The  word  in  itself 
is  apparently  lifeless,  even  as  the  thing 
in  itself  is  apparently  lifeless.  This  di- 
vorce between  what  I  might  call  spirit 
and  matter  has  thrown  us  back  on  our 
own  imaginations.  It  has  compelled  us 
to  evolve  a  method  of  relating  words  to 
each  other,  so  that  in  the  relation  there 
shall  come  back  to  our  minds  the  sugges- 
[198] 


READING  NOVELS 

tions  the  words  themselves  once  aroused. 
This  relating  of  words  in  unison  with 
the  things  they  stand  for,  is  prose.  The 
original  simple  homogeneity  of  speech, 
to  employ  the  Spencerian  terminology, 
has  become  a  complex  heterogeneity;  but 
in  this  process  of  evolution  it  has  ac- 
quired almost  infinite  possibilities  of  ar- 
rangement by  which  it  fulfils  its  work 
of  fitting  itself  to  our  larger  experiences 
of  life. 

In  its  earlier  forms  this  prose,  as  was 
to  be  expected,  was  uncouth  and  halting. 
It  was  the  language  of  the  common 
people,  and  took  very  roundabout  ways 
to  get  at  things.  It  said  in  chapters 
what  we  should  now  say  in  paragraphs. 
It  had  not  yet  acquired  the  quality,  which 
comes  from  mere  collocation,  of  appeal- 
ing to  the  reader's  imagination.  We 
need  but  to  compare  the  mediaeval  ro- 
[199] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

mances,  such  as  Malory's  Morte  D 'Ar- 
thur, and  Berner's  Huon  of  Bordeaux, 
with  Robinson  Crusoe,  Gulliver's  Trav- 
els and  The  Vicar  of  Wdkefield,  to  see 
what  a  difference  there  is  between  the 
prose  of  that  time  and  the  prose  of  a 
few  centuries  later;  to  become  aware  of 
the  remarkable  facility  of  arrangement 
of  words  acquired  in  that  comparatively 
short  interval — a  short  interval,  when 
we  remember  that  people  were  making 
themselves  into  nations  as  well  as  learn- 
ing how  to  speak  and  write.  Yet  De 
Foe,  Swift  and  Goldsmith  were  only  the 
founders  of  our  English  prose.  Since 
their  days  it  has  developed  even  more 
remarkably,  so  that  in  the  hands  of  a 
Thackeray  or  a  George  Meredith  it  ex- 
presses the  most  delicate  shades  and 
nuances  of  thought  and  experience  and 
emotion.  The  change  has  been  equally 
[200] 


READING  NOVELS 

remarkable  in  French  prose,  from  the 
"  long  -  winded  "  romances  like  Sir 
Launcelot  du  Lac  to  the  delicate,  crisp, 
and  brilliant  writing  of  Pierre  Loti  and 
Anatole  France. 

If,  as  I  say,  we  have  lost  the  original 
poetic  suggestiveness  in  words,  we  have 
certainly  made  ample  compensation  by 
creating  prose,  and  especially  the  full 
and  rich  and  meaningful  prose  of  the 
English  language.  Our  language  is 
freer,  more  accomplished  in  its  qualities 
of  flexibility  and  urbanity.  It  is  more 
responsive  to  the  delicate  calls  made 
upon  it.  We  are  no  longer  dependent 
on  the  speaker's  personality  for  the  full 
meaning;  we  receive  it  from  the  lan- 
guage itself.  We  use  it  for  the  most 
delicate  ends.  It  enables  us  to  approach 
and  embrace  any  subject  that  lends  it- 
self to  interpretative  and  imaginative 
[201] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

treatment.  We  picture  the  march  of 
events  in  living  colours;  we  narrate  the 
lives  of  heroes  and  working  men  so  that 
these  live  again;  we  precipitate  emotions 
and  trace  them  back  to  their  sources. 
The  consequent  benefits  of  such  an  in- 
strument are  incalculable.  It  gives  us 
the  inestimable  power  of  intercommu- 
nication. Example  and  precept  may  no 
longer  depend  on  memory's  tablets;  they 
have  been  indelibly  inscribed  as  litera- 
ture. Ambitions  that  we  feel,  need  not 
be  thwarted  by  the  contemplation  of  the 
clash  of  circumstance,  because  ambitions 
realized  have  been  recounted  in  inspirit- 
ing words.  The  past  is  no  longer  a  dead 
past,  but  has  been  recalled  from  its  grave 
and  made  to  live  again.  We  find  joy  in 
looking  forward  in  this  pleasure  of  look- 
ing backward.  It  is  this  prose  that  the 
novelist  uses  for  the  purpose  of  his  art. 
[202] 


READING   NOVELS 

The  story-teller  is  as  old  as  the  home. 
He  was  as  welcome  in  the  halls  of  the 
vikings  by  the  Scandinavian  fiords  and 
in  the  tents  of  the  Arab  chieftains  in  the 
desert,  as  he  is  to-day  in  the  ranch  of  the 
Texan  cattleman  or  the  log-cabin  of  the 
Maine  woodsman,  and  as  he  is  to  every 
child  that  is  born  of  honest  and  true- 
hearted  parents. 

"  Tell  me  a  story,  please,"  says  the 
tired  child  to  its  mother;  and  the  child 
will  sit  rapt  as  the  tale  is  unfolded  to  its 
beatitude  of  a  climax.  Its  little  heart 
will  beat  with  excitement  of  a  danger  to 
be  overcome,  and  its  tender  eyes  fill  with 
tears  for  a  trial  to  be  suffered;  and  what 
a  joy  comes  to  it  when  it  learns  that 
"  they  were  married  and  lived  happily 
ever  after." 

Men  and  women,  grown  as  we  are,  we 
are  still  Tarn  Samson's  bairns,  and  most 
[203] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

of  us  very  tired.  "  Tell  us  a  story,"  we 
say  to  the  novelist,  "  and  we  will  endow 
you  with  riches  and  bless  you  with 
thanksgiving.  Make  us  forget  our  sor- 
rows; lighten  our  hearts;  give  us  new 
interests  and  new  meanings  for  things; 
brighten  our  dreams;  give  us  hope;  and 
you  shall  abide  in  our  midst  as  one  of 
the  great  ones."  Is  it  any  wonder  that 
so  many  writers  have  taken  to  the  telling 
of  tales? 

The  remarkable  fact  in  modern  litera- 
ture is  the  growth  of  the  novel.  Of  all 
the  forms  of  literary  expression,  it  is  the 
one  most  practised.  Indeed,  the  most 
distinguished  writers  of  our  time  are 
those  who  are  novelists  by  profession 
It  would  seem  as  if  the  history  of  the 
literature  of  Europe  and  America  of  the 
last  half  century  is  a  history  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  art  of  story-telling.  A 
[204] 


READING   NOVELS 

roll-call  of  the  great  writers  of  this 
period  would  include  the  names  of 
Thackeray,  Dickens,  George  Meredith, 
George  Eliot,  George  Sand,  Balzac, 
Victor  Hugo,  Alexander  Dumas,  Henri 
Beyle,  Turgenieff,  Tolstoi,  Bjornson, 
De  Maupassant,  Gustave  Flaubert, 
Anatole  France,  Valdes,  Thomas  Hardy, 
Emily  and  Charlotte  Bronte,  Robert 
Louis  Stevenson,  Henry  James,  Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne,  Conan  Doyle,  Rud- 
yard  Kipling,  George  Gissing,  Henry 
Seton  Merriman,  James  Lane  Allen, 
Mark  Twain,  George  Du  Maurier  and 
Mrs.  Humphry  Ward.  And  all  these 
names  are  become  household  words. 
Why  is  this? 

The   answer  would   seem  to   be   that 

these  writers  have  found  the  tale  to  be  the 

one  form  of  literary  art  which  they  were 

certain  would  appeal;  or,  at  any  rate,  be 

[205] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

read.  Speaking  in  this  form  they  were 
assured  of  a  hearing.  The  hearing  ob- 
tained, the  novelist  could  take  a  digni- 
fied position  in  the  life  of  the  commu- 
nity. He  need  not  wait  in  depressing 
indigence  or  oppressing  poverty,  as  once 
upon  a  time  writers  have  been  compelled 
to  wait,  for  a  posterity  to  raise,  after 
they  were  dead,  monuments  to  their 
greater  glory.  They  can  sit  at  their 
ease  in  comfortable  affluence  and  enjoy 
the  reward  of  their  labours,  and  taste 
the  fruits  of  fame  while  still  walking 
the  pleasant  places  of  the  good  earth. 
The  man  of  letters  is,  after  all,  but  a 
mortal,  and  the  nature  of  him,  as,  in- 
deed, of  all  of  us,  is  to  be  pleased  and 
encouraged  to  do  better,  because  of  the 
praise  in  doing  well.  He  grows  in  his 
art,  and  he  also  becomes  a  wiser  man,  a 
richer  companion,  and  a  riper  fellow. 
[206] 


READING   NOVELS 

He  may  begin  by  aiming  to  live  highly, 
but  he  will  end  by  living  to  aim  highly. 
Of  course,  many  writers  are  tempted  by 
success  to  assume  virtues  which  they  do 
not  possess;  but  even  this  has  its  good 
side.  The  habit  of  assumption  must  tell 
in  the  long  run  and,  if  he  respect  his  art, 
the  novelist  will  remain  to  pray,  even 
though  he  came  to  scoff. 

Another  answer  to  the  question  lies  in 
the  fact  that  the  world  always  has  its 
teachers,  preachers,  prophets,  poets  and 
jesters,  who  are  moved  by  the  natural 
impulse  in  them  for  expression.  In 
times  past  each  of  these  had  his  own  way 
of  life  and  his  own  field  of  operation. 
But  times  have  changed,  "trade's  un- 
feeling train  "  has  dispossessed  them  of 
their  heritages.  We  will  no  longer  be 
joked  at,  preached  at,  or  taught  with  the 
ferule  and  fool's-cap.  We  are  still  chil- 
[207] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

dren,  but  we  can  choose  now,  and  we 
prefer  the  pleasure-giver  to  the  school- 
master. We  turn  our  backs  on  the  sat- 
irist, and  tell  him  "  he  is  a  fool  in  his 
folly " ;  we  make  ugly  faces  at  the 
teacher  and  preacher,  because  they  are 
so  serious  they  do  not  know  how  to  play 
with  us;  we  gaze  in  ignorant  wonder  at 
the  poet,  understanding  little  and  caring 
less  for  what  he  sings.  No,  these  do  not 
catch  us.  There  was  nothing  left  for  the 
preacher  and  teacher  but  to  take  to  the 
novel;  and  this  is  what  they  have  done. 
They  now  beguile  us  with  tales  while  in- 
sinuating their  lessons.  Like  the  child  at 
its  mother's  knees,  we  are  taken  un- 
awares, caught  by  the  more  or  less  en- 
chanting visions  of  a  fairyland  and, 
before  we  are  aware  of  it,  we  have  swal- 
lowed the  moral.  I  do  not  say  that  such 
novels  are  distinguished  literary  achieve- 
[208] 


READING   NOVELS 

ments.  I  am  but  stating  the  fact  to 
illustrate  the  attracting  power  of  a  tale 
well  told: 

*'  Truth  in  closest  words  will  fail, 
While  Truth  embodied  in  a  Tale 
May  enter  in  at  lowly  doors." 

The  trouble  is,  this  kind  of  novel 
threatens  to  pervert  and  destroy  the  art 
of  story-telling.  In  these  days  of  moral- 
izing and  preaching,  the  novel  would  ap- 
pear to  be  an  easy  way  for  anyone  cursed 
with  a  grievance,  or  oppressed  by  the  re- 
forming spirit,  or  afflicted  with  "  an  itch- 
ing leprosy  of  wit,"  to  erect  his  own  pul- 
pit from  which  he  may  rail  at  men  and 
women  for  their  bad  dispositions  and 
their  wicked  ways.  We  ought  to  mend 
our  ways  if  only  to  put  a  stop  to  this 
overflowing  stream  of  moralizing  elo- 
quence. And  yet,  if  we  did,  the  enthu- 
siastic and  ingenious  missionary  would 
[209] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

probably  find  some  other  devil  in  us  that 
needed  exorcising.  We  may,  however, 
take  a  large  satisfaction  in  the  knowl- 
edge that  Time's  waste-paper  basket  is 
ample. 

Fiction,  said  Lord  Bacon,  "raises  the 
mind  by  accommodating  the  images  of 
things  to  our  desires,  and  not,  like  his- 
tory and  reason,  subjecting  the  mind  to 
things."  If  Bacon  be  right,  then  have 
our  aforesaid  preachers  and  teachers 
good  authority  for  using  the  novel  for 
the  moral  purpose.  We  are  more  moved 
by  our  imaginations  than  we  are  by  our 
ratiocinative  faculties,  and  if  the  ap- 
peal to  reason  fail,  why  should  not  the 
appeal  be  made  to  the  imagination? 
Even  Dickens  found  this  a  pleasant  way 
in  which  to  disport  his  reforming  and 
moralizing  spirit.  Well,  I  do  not  say 
that  a  moral  purpose  is  not  good;  but  I 
[210] 


READING  NOVELS 

do  say  it  is  a  very  bad  motive,  and  not 
at  all  conducive  to  the  best  art.  In  the 
first  place,  it  is  inimical  to  the  finer  play 
of  the  creative  power.  This  should  be 
directed  to  nothing  other  than  its  own 
fulfilment  within  the  limits  of  the  art. 
If  truth  be  the  novelist's  tale,  let  it  ap- 
pear in  the  forms  of  beauty.  If  we  are 
really  anxious  for  a  moral,  we  shall  get 
it  here;  for  there  is  no  finer  moralizer 
than  the  pleasure  which  is  experienced 
in  a  perfect  creation.  In  the  second 
place  a  public  hungering  for  moral  tales 
is  a  public  that  is  oppressed  by  circum- 
stance and  chained  to  the  conditions  im- 
posed on  it  by  the  struggle  for  existence. 
A  free  people,  free  in  mind  as  well  as 
body,  concerns  itself  least  with  consider- 
ations about  good  and  bad.  Life  is  too 
full  of  joy,  and  there  is  delight  in  living 
for  mere  living's  sake,  and  there  is  no 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

time  for  questionings  as  to  their  neigh- 
bours' conduct,  or  their  own  immortal 
souls.  The  authors  of  Daphnis  and 
Chloe  and  The  Golden  Ass  knew  this 
high  wisdom;  and  these  delightful  tales 
still  delight,  and  will  delight  the  more, 
as  we  grow  to  live  in  a  wise  innocence 
made  richer  by  experience. 

Therefore,  to  point  morals  at  us  is  to 
appeal  to  what  is  lowest  in  us  and  not  to 
what  is  highest.  It  is  to  heap  a  Pelion 
of  rhetorical  derision  on  an  Ossa  of  the 
scorn  and  weight  of  circumstance.  Life, 
as  we  live  it,  is  a  sufficient  castigator 
without  the  aid  of  the  schoolmaster's  rod 
or  the  preacher's  whip.  What  we  want 
is  not  to  be  bowed  down  under  the  con- 
sciousness of  our  wickedness;  but  to  be 
uplifted  by  a  realized  ideal  within  us. 
We  want  the  novel  to  give  us  what,  per- 
haps, we  are  too  poor  in  spirit  to  find  for 
[212] 


READING   NOVELS 

ourselves;  what  we  have  not  the  time  to 
imagine  for  ourselves.  We  want  it  to 
tell  us  of  life  so  that  life  shall  be  allur- 
ing and  not  despairing;  to  make  us  real- 
ize that  there  is  more  virtue  in  being  joy- 
ous than  there  is  in  being  fearful  and 
cunning.  We  want  it  to  embody  the 
best  and  so  to  present  it  that  that  best 
shall  live  in  us  as  our  virtues.  These 
given,  we  shall  be  helped  to  a  surer  hope, 
a  stronger  and  worthier  ambition,  a 
fuller  charity,  and  a  wiser  innocence  in 
our  daily  doings.  For  it  is  a  character- 
istic of  human  nature  that  it  grows  like 
unto  what  it  loves. 

Finally,  a  work  of  art  is  itself  a  moral 
influence,  the  choicest  of  moral  influ- 
ences. It  is  not,  of  course,  a  categorical 
imperative;  it  is  much  more,  for  it  is  the 
essential  perfume  of  all  imperatives,  the 
atmosphere  in  which  what  we  call  life 
[213] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

blossoms  and  flowers.  The  sun,  we  can 
well  imagine,  troubles  itself  not  a  jot  as 
to  whether  or  no  the  apple  on  the  tree  it 
warms  will  be  fit  to  eat.  If  we  dare 
ascribe  a  thoughtful  purpose  to  its  work 
of  radiation,  we  should  say  it  was  aiming 
to  produce  a  perfect  apple,  regardless 
of  what  we  afterwards  did  with  it.  So 
that  the  moral  of  a  novel  should  lie  not 
in  any  set  purpose  of  the  novelist,  but  in 
the  impression  it  leaves  on  our  imagina- 
tion and  the  use  we  make  of  the  impres- 
sion. As  with  the  poet  we  supplement 
the  tale  and  complement  the  teller. 

The  business  of  the  novelist,  there- 
fore, is  to  tell  of  life.  His  success  in  the 
telling  will  depend  on  the  strength  of  the 
illusion  he  creates;  and  this  illusion  will 
bring  pleasure  and  through  pleasure  any 
other  impulse  that  is  for  us  fulfilling. 
He  may  write  of  people  long  ago  dead, 
[214] 


READING   NOVELS 

or  of  people  now  living:  the  events  he 
narrates  may  have  taken  place  years  ago 
or  are  taking  place  to-day;  it  matters 
little  so  long  as  the  illusion  he  creates  in 
us  is  strong  enough  and  direct  enough 
to  be  acceptable  to  our  imaginations. 
And  this  illusion  shall  be  so  real  that 
there  will  be  no  question  as  to  past  or 
present;  it  must  be  now.  Thackeray's 
Henry  Esmond  is  a  signal  example  of 
what  I  mean.  Apart  from  its  admirably 
achieved  eighteenth  -  century  English, 
which,  of  course,  helps  to  heighten  the 
illusion,  Thackeray  conceives  and  pre- 
sents his  actors  in  this  drama  of  a  past 
life  as  if  he  had  personally  known  them. 
They  are  as  real  to  him  as  the  friends 
he  met  at  his  club  every  day.  In  the 
truest  sense  they  must  have  been,  or  they 
would  not  be  real  to  us.  This  illusion 
of  reality  is  so  powerfully  achieved  that 
[215] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

when  we  have  finished  reading  the  story 
and  know  that  we  have  been  beguiled, 
the  men  and  women  of  this  imaginary 
world  refuse  to  leave  us.  This,  of  course, 
is  a  rare  achievement,  and  stamps  the 
writer  as  a  master  in  his  art.  Scott,  in 
Ivanhoe,  and  Hawthorne,  in  The  Scar- 
let Letter,  were  almost  as  successful. 
Charles  Reade  in  The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth,,  and  Blackmore,  in  Lorna 
Doone,  came  very  near  this  high  reach. 
I  mention  these  novels  in  connection  with 
Henri/  Esmond  only  to  point  out  the 
common  quality  they  possess  of  perma- 
nence in  their  power  of  illusion. 

A  writer  of  a  so-called  "  historical " 
novel  may  easily  please  if  he  possess 
but  a  fair  power  of  narration.  The  sub- 
ject-matter and  the  background  are 
easily  obtainable,  and  he  has  a  large 
store  of  heroes  to  choose  from.  In  read- 
[216] 


READING   NOVELS 

ing  such  a  novel  we  are  not  a  whit 
fooled;  no  more  than  we  would  be  in 
reading  Gibbon  or  Macaulay  or  Froude. 
It  is  quite  another  thing,  however,  to  re- 
create the  past  and  keep  it  living  by  the 
very  force  of  the  imaginative  impulse. 
Fine  as  are  The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth 
and  Lorna  Doone,  they  are  less  creations, 
in  this  sense,  than  splendid  narrations  in 
the  historian's  sense.  We  do  not  feel 
this  of  Henry  Esmond,  Ivanhoe  and 
The  Scarlet  Letter.  Henry  Esmond  is 
far  more  real  to  us  than  either  William 
of  Orange  or  Bolingbroke.  What  Ma- 
caulay could  not  do  Thackeray  did.  Es- 
mond has  the  quality  of  being  perma- 
nent for  experience,  and  the  experience 
is,  moreover,  delightful. 

To  make  the  past  live  again  is  a  rare 
achievement;  but  the  novelist  is  not  alone 
in  the  possession  of  this  power.    Boswell 
[217] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

showed  it  in  his  Life  of  Doctor  John- 
son, and  Boswell  was  not  gifted  with 
any  undue  share  of  imagination.  What 
helped  Boswell,  and  in  the  result  sur- 
prised him,  was  an  abject  devotion  to  his 
hero;  a  devotion  that  made  him  utterly 
reckless  of  himself,  if  only  he  could  pic- 
ture his  friend  as  he  knew  him.  This 
devotion  is  another  quality  the  novelist 
must  possess  if  he  is  to  do  work  that  shall 
abide — and  devotion  with  the  novelist 
spells  sincerity.  What  strikes  us  most 
in  the  writings  of  the  great  tale-tellers 
is  their  sincerity.  Balzac,  with  all  his 
faults,  is  so  sincere,  that  we  forgive  him 
much  for  this  one  quality  alone.  It  is 
that  which  makes  Le  P&re  Goriot  the 
masterpiece  it  is.  It  dignifies  even  the 
sordid  and  shabby  surroundings  of  Ma- 
dame Vauquer's  boarding-house.  No 
detail  was  too  insignificant  for  Balzac; 
[218] 


READING  NOVELS 

his  incomparable  power  moved  every- 
where. We  are  often  terribly  bored  by. 
his  minutise;  but  we  are  convinced  by 
his  earnestness  and  faithfulness.  His 
art  may  be  faulty,  but  his  sincerity  is  al- 
ways true.  Dickens,  in  spite  of  his  ar- 
tifices, was  sincere.  So  were  Gustave 
Flaubert,  George  Eliot,  TurgeniefF, 
Oliver  Goldsmith  and  Daniel  De  Foe. 

Sincerity  alone,  however,  will  not  avail. 
Much  may  be  accomplished  by  an  imagi- 
nation working  in  sincerity;  but  the  final 
result  will  depend  on  the  novelist's  tem- 
perament and  character.  This  sounds  as 
if  I  were  repeating  myself;  but  I  do  not 
intend  a  repetition.  When  I  speak  of 
the  novelist's  temperament,  I  mean  his 
disposition  to  observe  life;  the  patience 
to  gather  details  that  are  so  necessary  to 
the  production  of  illusion.  And  when  I 
say  the  final  test  of  his  art  will  depend  on 
[219] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

character,  I  refer  to  that  quality  in  him 
.which  stamps  his  work  as  individual — 
not  his  style  altogether,  though  that  is 
characteristic;  nor  his  treatment,  though 
that,  too,  is  characteristic,  but  his  point 
of  view,  his  interpretation.  It  is  here 
that  the  novelist  differs  from  the  poet. 
The  poet's  experience  is  immediate;  the 
novelist's  is  mediate.  The  poem  is  a 
revelation;  the  novel  is  an  interpretation. 
Revelations  may  be  independent  of  char- 
acter (the  profoundest  always  are) ;  in- 
terpretations are  necessarily  dependent 
on  character.  Emile  Zola  is  in  every  line 
of  his  Rougon-Macquart  series  of  tales; 
Henri  Beyle  Stendhal  fills  La  Char- 
treuse de  Parme  and  Rouge  et  Noir; 
Balzac  overflows  the  Comedie  Humaine; 
Thackeray  is  never  absent  from  Vanity 
Fair;  Dickens  was  acting  in  almost 
every  story  he  wrote;  Scott  fought  bat- 
[220] 


READING  NOVELS 

ties  and  chanted  war  songs  through  half 
the  Waverley  Novels;  Emily  Bronte  is 
really  known  only  in  her  Wuihering 
Heights. 

This  that  I  call  character  is  not  in- 
jected bodily  into  the  tale;  it  is  what  the 
author  cannot  help  from  getting  into 
the  tale,  and  what  he  cannot  keep  the 
tale  from  giving  out.  It  is  the  subtle  in- 
fluence that  emanates  from  the  total 
product  and  impregnates  us  in  some  such 
way  as  we  feel  the  indefinite  sensations 
stirred  in  us  by  summer's  lovely  dawns 
or  the  soft,  golden  twilights  of  autumn's 
evenings,  or  thunderstorms,  or  any  of 
nature's  arresting  processes.  It  is  the 
author  himself  reappearing  in  spiritual 
form.  And  on  his  character*  will  stand 
or  fall  the  thing  he  has  made. 

All  these  qualities  of  the  writer  com- 
bine to  receive  the  stuff  of  life — its  in- 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

cidents,  its  characters,  its  environment— 
into  the  crucible  of  his  creative  imagina- 
tion, and,  by  a  secret  alchemy,  of  which 
the  novelist  himself  can  give  no  explana- 
tion, produce  a  thing  called  the  novel — 
the  thing  embodied  as  literature  that  shall 
answer  to  the  reality  we  know  as  life. 

It  will  be  found  on  reading  the  best 
novelists  that  those  who  have  been  men 
of  action  rather  than  onlookers  in  the 
game  of  life,  have  a  more  virile  style, 
they  give  a  sense  of  impressive  certainty 
and  speak  as  if  the  thing  or  the  incident 
jumps  into  its  word-symbol.  It  is  a 
quality  which  distinguished  those  Eliza- 
bethan writers  who  were  travellers,  sol- 
diers and  sailors.  Bunyan,  Fielding  and 
Smollett  (in  Roderick  Random)  give 
this  sense.  I  seem  to  trace  De  Foe's 
mastery  of  imaginative  realism  to  the 
fact  that  he  had  busied  himself  in  the 


READING   NOVELS 

making  of  pantiles.  I  am  not  saying 
that  style  depends  on  an  author's  work- 
ing for  a  living  at  some  trade  other  than 
that  of  writing;  but  I  do  say  that  his 
having  played  the  game  of  life  in  this 
way  tends  to  enrich  his  style  and  give 
precision  to  his  images.  The  onlooker,  so 
to  speak,  will  be  more  or  less  stiff  and 
artificial.  Even  Stevenson's  writing 
reads  as  if  it  had  been  very  carefully 
elaborated.  Most  modern  French  novel- 
ists display  this  artificiality;  and  the 
large  majority  of  living  English  and 
American  novelists,  especially  the  women- 
novelists,  are  amoebic  and  flabby  in 
their  styles.  This,  however,  may  be  due 
to  their  "  professionalism."  The  so- 
called  novelist  who  "  gets  up  "  his  sub- 
ject, and  is  ever  on  the  lookout  for  plots, 
is  not  creating,  he  is  merely  "  pot-boil- 
ing." 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

It  would  appear  as  if  I  were  writing 
a  treatise  on  what  the  late  Sir  Walter 
Besant  called  "The  Art  of  Fiction." 
That,  however,  is  far  from  my  inten- 
tion; there  are  already  many  estimable 
works  (including  one  by  Sir  Walter 
himself)  written  by  professional  gen- 
tlemen who  are  far  more  intimately  ac- 
quainted with  the  methods  for  "  success  " 
in  writing  fiction  than  I  am.  I  am  try- 
ing to  say,  not  how  a  novel  should  be 
written,  but  how  a  novel  should  be  un- 
derstood and  appreciated.  I  am  doing 
this  that  my  readers  may  realize  that  the 
best  novels  are  not  to  be  read  merely  to 
pass  the  time;  and  that  there  are  novels 
from  which  may  be  derived  a  pleasure 
that  is  energizing  and  not  enervating. 

A  few  years  ago  it  was  considered  im- 
proper to  read  this  form  of  literature.  I 
have  no  doubt  there  is  still  much  justifi- 
[224] 


READING   NOVELS 

cation  for  this  attitude — it  depends  on 
the  reader  as  well  as  the  writer.  People 
who  are  shocked  at  seeing  a  child  rolling 
over  on  the  floor  will  not  find  much  in 
Tristram  Shandy.  They  will  miss  a  lot 
of  fun;  but  then  such  people  do  not  find 
the  necessity  for  that  savoury;  possibly 
because  they  are  funny  in  themselves. 
There  are  also  many  homes  in  which  a 
novel  is  still  forbidden  fruit.  I  am  afraid 
that  bar  is  responsible  for  many  of  the 
so-called  moral  tales  that  are  being  so 
generously  written  by  those  who  have 
"  acquired  the  art  of  fiction."  Not  that 
the  moral  tale  may  not  have  its  rightful 
place  in  our  scheme  of  things;  but  it  is 
not  conducive  to  pleasure.  As  a  conse- 
quence we  do  not  breed  Fieldings.  Our 
modern  novelists  have  one  eye  on  their 
royalties  and  the  other  on  the  circulating 
library  and  the  librarian-oracle;  and  they 
[225] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

find  it  more  profitable  and  more  repu- 
table to  "  subject  the  mind  to  things  " 
rather  than  uplift  desires  and  accommo- 
date things  to  them.  If  they  are  really 
anxious  to  achieve  greatness  I  would 
recommend  them  to  read  a  pleasant  and 
pretty  essay  on  the  subject  of  their  art 
by  Mr.  Henry  James.  I  promise  them  a 
delightful  half -hour. 

When  I  speak  of  the  pleasure  of  read- 
ing novels  and  romances  I  am  not,  of 
course,  thinking  of  the  works  of  the  ex- 
cellent craftsmen  to  whom  I  have  just 
referred.  I  am  thinking  of  those  writers 
for  whom  expression  is  an  art  and  a 
faith,  for  those  master-workers  in  life's 
materials  who  mean  no  more  than  to  pro- 
duce a  self -revealing  whole,  as  perfectly 
as  they  can.  I  am  thinking  of  Cer- 
vantes, Fielding,  Sterne,  Jane  Austen, 
Sir  Walter  Scott,  Thackeray,  Dickens, 
[226] 


READING  NOVELS 

Emily  Bronte,  George  Eliot,  Thomas 
Hardy,  George  Meredith,  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne,  Henry  James,  Turgenieff, 
Balzac,  Stendhal,  Alexandre  Dumas, 
Victor  Hugo,  Gustave  Flaubert,  Guy 
de  Maupassant,  Anatole  France.  Some- 
times Robert  Louis  Stevenson  and  An- 
thony Trollope  come  into  view;  some- 
times James  Lane  Allen  and  W.  J. 
Locke;  sometimes  Charles  Reade  and 
William  de  Morgan;  sometimes  George 
Gissing  and  Henry  Seton  Merriman.  I 
think  of  all  these  for  the  splendid  pleas- 
ure they  have  given  me — the  pleasure 
that  comes  from  sheer  freedom  of  the 
spirit.  For  it  is  a  mark  of  genius  to 
sadden  the  spirit  and  to  uplift  the  heart 
at  the  same  time,  as  I  have  found  in 
Turgenieff  and  Hardy  and  Thackeray. 
But  in  the  great  wide  space  of  the  world, 
opened  up  by  these  interpreters  of  life 
[227] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

and  magicians  in  illusion,  there  is  room 
for  every  phase  of  imaginative  exercise. 
I  think  especially  of  the  great  humor- 
ists; those  gifted  beings  who  could  touch 
the  very  heart  of  the  mystery  of  life  into 
laughter  —  Cervantes,  Fielding,  Sterne, 
Thackeray  and  Dickens — the  laughter 
that  is  also  so  close  to  tears,  in  which 
Thackeray  especially  dissolves  us.  Hu- 
mour is  the  rope  on  which  wisdom  dances, 
and  wise  indeed  is  he  who  can  balance 
himself  in  laughter  on  the  strands  of 
truth.  Dickens  and  Cervantes  and 
Fielding  are  of  the  wise  men  in  this  re- 
spect. Fielding  and  Dickens  are  broth- 
ers— Englishmen  in  their  natures,  their 
points  of  view,  their  sincerity,  and  in 
what  I  may  call  the  non-intellectuality 
of  the  basis  from  which  their  humour 
played.  Fielding  had  a  larger  grasp  of 
character.  His  creations  are  types; 
[228] 


READING   NOVELS 

Dickens's  are  individuals.  Fielding's 
was  a  generous,  large,  and  amply  ful- 
filling power;  Dickens's  power  lay  in  his 
vivid  presentation  of  a  special  individ- 
ual, odd  characters,  single  individuali- 
ties. He  is  the  perfect  showman.  The 
men  and  women  he  presents  to  our  eyes 
are  of  the  common  people  of  the  com- 
mon day,  all  near  to  mother  earth,  and 
all  redolent  of  the  smoke  of  every-day 
human  strife.  Dickens  himself  was  of 
the  common,  and  I  do  not  say  this  to  his 
disparagement;  rather  the  contrary.  lie 
was  true  to  the  truth  of  his  experience, 
even  if  that  experience  was  transfigured 
in  the  golden  light  of  his  imagination. 
Exaggeration  is  abundant  in  him,  but  its 
over-indulgence  is  softened  and  lost  in 
the  richness  of  his  colouring.  His  hu- 
mour is  not  intellectual — humour  rarely 
is  intellectual — it  belongs  to  the  levels  of 
[229] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

experience,  and  finds  its  real  home  in  the 
highways  and  byways,  in  the  narrow, 
crowded  streets  where  people  jostle  each 
other,/  rub  each  other's  shoulders,  and 
touch  the  risibilities  to  the  quick  by  un- 
courteous  selfishness.  The  other  side  of 
humour  is  pathos,  where  laughter  melts 
into  tears.  This  is  Dickens's  humour  as 
it  is  Dickens's  pathos.  Dickens  is  laugh- 
ter-moving, and  he  is  also  tear-compell- 
ing. Like  his  humour,  his  pathos  is  also 
non-intellectual.  It  smacks  even  of  vul- 
garity, so  true  is  it  to  the  common  life. 

Dickens  had  been  bred  in  a  hard  school ; 
his  wisdom  came  from  suffering.  It  is 
this  which  tinges  so  many  of  his  wise 
words  with  the  dun  colours  of  a  London 
day.  But  he  knows  that  suffering  can 
be  best  mitigated  by  joy,  so  that  a  Mi- 
cawber,  a  Joe  Gargery,  a  Doctor  Mari- 
gold, a  Tom  Pinch  are  blessed  with  the 
[230] 


READING  NOVELS 

gift  of  humour  and  the  power  of  smiling 
through  tears. 

In  reading  Dickens  don't  assume  the 
superior  attitude.  It  is  getting  to  be  the 
fashion  to  look  down  on  him ;  it  will  be  to 
our  misfortune  if  the  fashion  prevail. 
But  whether  he  be  fashionable  or  no,  he 
must  ever  remain  the  most  widely  read 
of  English  novelists.  His  appeal  is  not 
to  any  particular  age  or  to  any  special 
order  of  mind ;  it  is  to  all  ages  and  to  the 
common  mind.  I  can  conceive  of  no 
time  in  which  the  sons  and  daughters  of 
men  and  women  shall  not  be  crowing  and 
crying  at  the  play  of  Dickens's  great 
pantomime  of  life. 

If  I  can  say  all  this  of  Dickens  I 
should  say  far  more  of  Henry  Fielding, 
whose  Tom  Jones  is  one  of  the  master- 
pieces of  English  literature.  He  tells  us 
his  book  is  to  treat  of  "  Human  Nature," 
[231] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

and  there  never  was  a  saner  book  writ- 
ten in  any  language.  Had  Dryden  lived 
to  read  it  he  would  assuredly  have  placed 
it  by  the  side  of  his  Chaucer,  and  ex- 
claimed, "  This,  also,  is  God's  Plenty." 
With  all  his  profound  knowledge  of 
men  and  women  and  life,  and  in  spite  of 
his  hatred  of  shams,  hypocrisy  and  in- 
sincerity, there  is  such  a  magnificent 
magnanimity  in  Fielding,  such  a  great 
heart,  such  a  sympathy  for  human  frail- 
ties, and  such  a  wise  and  keen  eye.  Gen- 
erations to  come  of  the  best  minds  will 
drink  their  most  refreshing  draughts 
from  this  reservoir  of  wit  and  humour. 
Fielding's  genius  is  nearest  to  Shake- 
speare's of  any  writer  I  know  in  the 
English  language.  If  any  of  my  read- 
ers, and  I  doubt  not  there  will  be  many, 
have  heard  that  Fielding's  Tom  Jones  is 
an  improper  book,  I  shall  best  answer 
[232] 


READING  NOVELS 

them  by  a  quotation  from  Fielding's 
farewell  to  his  reader,  which  may  be 
found  in  its  entirety  at  the  beginning  of 
the  eighteenth  book  of  that  immortal 
novel : — 

"  And  now,  my  friend,  I  take  this  op- 
portunity (as  I  shall  have  no  other)  of 
heartily  wishing  thee  well.  If  I  have 
been  an  entertaining  companion  to  thee, 
I  promise  thee  it  is  what  I  have  desired. 
If  in  anything  I  have  offended,  it  was 
really  without  any  intention.  Some 
things,  perhaps,  here  said,  may  have  hit 
thee  or  thy  friends;  but  I  do  most  sol- 
emnly declare  that  they  were  not  pointed 
at  thee  or  them.  I  question  not  but  thou 
hast  been  told,  among  other  stories  of 
me,  that  thou  wast  to  travel  with  a  very 
scurrilous  fellow;  but  whoever  told  you 
so  did  me  an  injury.  No  man  detests 
and  despises  scurrility  more  than  my- 
[233] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

self;  nor  hath  any  man  ever  been  treated 
with  more." 

To  this  I  would  add,  in  all  sincerity,  a 
few  lines  from  William  Caxton's  pref- 
ace to  Malory's  Morte  D* Arthur: 

"  And  for  to  pass  the  time  this  book 
shall  be  pleasant  to  read  in,  but  for  to 
give  faith  and  belief  that  all  is  true  that 
is  contained  herein,  ye  be  at  your  liberty; 
but  all  is  written  for  our  doctrine,  and 
for  to  beware  that  we  fall  not  to  vice 
nor  sin,  but  to  exercise  and  follow  vir- 
tue; by  the  which  we  may  come  and  at- 
tain to  good  fame  and  renown  in  this 
life,  and  after  this  short  and  transitory 
life  to  come  unto  everlasting  bliss  in 
heaven." 

It  is  curious  that  a  work  like  Tom 
Jones  should  have  been  followed,  in  less 
than  a  quarter  of  a  century,  by  such  a 
prose  idyll  as  Goldsmith's  Vicar  of 


READING  NOVELS 

Wakefield.  The  two  are  poles  apart  in 
every  sense,  except  that  both  are  won- 
derful realizations  of  life  written  by  hu- 
morists. Such  a  conjunction  of  differ- 
ences but  goes  to  illustrate  the  richness 
of  the  material  that  lies  ready  for  the 
novelist's  art,  and  the  infinite  possibilities 
of  expression. 

One  can  scarcely  realize  that  George 
Meredith,  who  is  but  just  dead,  wrote 
contemporaneously  with  Thackeray  and 
Dickens.  What  is  still  more  remarkable 
is  the  difference  in  the  character  of  the 
art  that  distinguishes  Thackeray  and 
Dickens  and  Meredith — all  three  humor- 
ists— from  each  other.  There  is  a  mid- 
Victorian  flavour  in  the  satirist  and 
comedian,  that  lingers  in  spite  of  their 
individuality  of  treatment.  In  Meredith 
there  is  absolutely  no  trace  of  a  period. 
He  is  as  fresh  and  new  as  the  morning's 
[235] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

sunrise;  and,  though  but  just  passed 
away,  is  as  ready  for  judgment  as  a 
Greek  classic.  We  need  not  wait  for 
time  to  give  us  our  perspective;  the 
qualities  in  Meredith  are  the  qualities  of 
the  greatest  masters  in  art;  and  his  style, 
which  some  find  irksome,  will  be  found 
to  yield  the  properties  that  belong  to 
genius. 

Meredith  is  not  the  supreme  raconteur 
that  Alexandre  Dumas  was;  but  he  has 
what  compels  our  homage  in  Dumas,  the 
magical  power  of  illusion.  I  am  not  in- 
stituting a  comparison  between  the  two; 
no  comparison  is  possible.  I  am  simply 
ascribing  to  Meredith  the  same  power 
that  we  find  at  its  highest  expression  in 
another  novelist,  whom  we  distinguish 
for  that  power.  As  a  novelist  Dumas 
holds  no  high  place;  he  was  really  what 
may  be  called  a  romantic  historian;  but 
[236] 


READING  NOVELS 

he  had  what  no  historian  has  as  yet 
dared  to  indulge  in  if  he  possessed  it,  for 
fear  of  being  accused  of  exaggeration, 
namely,  an  astonishing  power  to  make 
vivid  the  past.  He  might  be  likened  to  a 
very  clever  scene  painter  who  knew  how 
to  place  his  lights  so  that  the  moving 
panorama  should  show  and  seem  the  very 
march  of  events  in  their  mise-en-scene. 
Scott  had  Dumas'  power;  but  he  had  in 
addition  the  novelist's  genius  for  relat- 
ing incidents  and  scenery  and  character 
to  the  purpose  of  the  complete  novel.  In 
a  word,  he  was  an  artist  as  well  as  a  ro- 
mancer. Dumas  was  less  artist  than  ro- 
mancer. 

Meredith  is  an  artist  to  his  finger  tips. 
Incident  and  character  and  background, 
so  to  speak,  are  seen  by  him  as  fluid,  each 
melting  into  the  other,  each  assisting  the 
other  in  their  contributory  flow  to  the 
[237] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

one  splendid  stream  of  his  novel.  He 
is  a  great  novelist  because  he  is  so  emi- 
nently successful  in  solidifying,  embody- 
ing, and  shaping  all  the  elements  of  his 
ideal  world  so  that  they  fuse  into  a 
whole  that  appears  actual,  and  real,  and 
living.  His  men  and  women  do  not 
walk  across  a  room,  or  hold  a  conversa- 
tion, or  meet  each  other  anywhere,  inde- 
pendent of  their  surroundings.  As  he 
tells  it  incident  and  environment  become 
one  thing,  make  one  impression — an  im- 
pression absolutely  necessary  to  the  illu- 
sion. If  he  describes  a  lady's  dress, 
the  dress  is  not  objective;  it  is  one 
of  the  many  subjective  experiences  of 
which  the  novel  as  a  whole  is  the  total 
unity. 

"  She  wore  a  dress  cunning  to  embrace 
the  shape  and  flutter  loose  about  it,  in 
the  spirit  of  a  summer's  day.     Calypso- 
[238] 


READING   NOVELS 

clad,  Dr.  Middleton  would  have  called 
her.  See  the  silver  birch  in  the  breeze; 
here  it  swells,  there  it  scatters,  and  it  is 
puffed  to  a  round,  and  it  streams  like  a 
pennon,  and  now  gives  the  glimpse  and 
shine  of  the  white  stem's  line  within,  now 
hurries  over  it,  denying  that  it  was  vis- 
ible, with  a  chatter  along  the  sweeping 
folds,  while  still  the  white  peeps  through. 
She  had  the  wonderful  art  of  dressing  to 
suit  the  season  and  the  sky.  .  .  .  Mil- 
linery would  tell  us  that  she  wore  a  fichu 
of  thin  white  muslin  crossed  in  front  on 
a  dress  of  the  same  light  stuff,  trimmed 
with  a  deep  rose.  She  carried  a  grey- 
silk  parasol,  traced  at  the  border  with 
green  creepers  and  across  the  arm  de- 
voted to  Cross  jay,  a  length  of  trailing 
ivy,  and  in  that  hand  a  bunch  of  the  first 
long  grasses.  These  hues  of  red  rose  and 
green  and  pale  green,  ruffled  and  pouted 
[239] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

in  the  billowy  white  of  the  dress  balloon- 
ing and  volleying  softly,  like  a  yacht  be- 
fore the  sail  bends  low;  but  she  walked 
not  like  one  blown  against;  resembling 
rather  the  day  of  the  South- West  driv- 
ing the  clouds,  gallantly  firm  in  commo- 
tion; interfusing  colour  and  varying  in 
the  features  from  laugh  to  smile  and 
look  of  settled  pleasure,  like  the  heavens 
above  the  breeze." 

"  All  this,"  you  say,  "  to  tell  merely 
how;  a  pretty  young  lady  looked  when 
going  out  for  a  walk  with  a  boy? "  Yes, 
all  this.  Why?  Because  all  this  is  part 
of  the  story,  and  an  essential  part.  Wil- 
loughby  Patterne  must  see  Clara  Mid- 
dleton  thus;  at  the  sight  his  heart  will 
dissolve  into  a  sea  of  passionate  emotion. 
You,  the  reader,  must  feel  as  Wil- 
loughby  Patterne  feels,  or  you  will  not 
understand  his  later  agony;  and  you 
[240] 


READING  NOVELS 

must  be  brought  not  merely  to  under- 
stand, but  literally  to  live  the  agony  with 
Willoughby  Patterne.  That  is  why  all 
this  is  necessary.  The  description  is  not 
mere  description;  it  is  the  object  seen  in 
the  atmosphere  of  emotion.  If  Meredith 
describes  even  so  unimportant  a  thing  as 
the  hair  on  the  back  of  the  young  lady's 
neck,  he  dare  not  "  pad."  You  may  be 
sure  there  will  be  no  description  without 
the  presence  of  one  of  the  persons  of  his 
play  who  is  experiencing  the  thing  de- 
scribed : 

"  He  placed  himself  at  a  corner  of  the 
doorway  for  her  to  pass  him  into  the 
house,  and  doated  on  her  cheek,  her  ear, 
and  the  softly  dusky  nape  of  her  neck, 
where  this  way  and  that  the  little  light- 
coloured  irreclaimable  curls  running  tru- 
ant from  the  comb  and  the  knot — curls, 
half -curls,  root-curls,  vine-ringlets,  wed- 
[241] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

ding  rings,  fledgeling  feathers,  tufts  of 
down,  blown  wisps  —  waved  or  fell, 
waved  over  or  up  or  involutedly,  or 
strayed,  loose  and  downward,  in  the 
form  of  small  silken  paws,  hardly  any 
of  them  much  thicker  than  a  crayon 
shading,  cunninger  than  long  round 
locks  of  gold  to  trick  the  heart." 

You  dare  swear  that  this  was  just  how 
the  lover  noted  these  minute  details. 
Could  anything  be  more  exquisitely  ap- 
pealing than  this  "  aside  "  which  comes 
as  a  whispered  chorus  to  let  us  into  the 
secret  pulses  of  the  very  soul  of  the 
lover  standing  by,  and  who  is  himself 
hardly  conscious,  but  only  mistily  aware 
of  his  own  emotional  state?  This  is  the 
work  of  the  consummate  artist,  who  sees 
values  in  the  most  delicate  lines,  and  neg- 
lects not  even  the  caress  of  his  brush  if 
he  knows  that  the  caress  will  heighten  the 


READING  NOVELS 

effect  and  assist  in  the  perfection  of  the 
impression. 

It  is  this  exquisite  sense  and  use  of  de- 
tail that  is,  probably,  the  distinguishing 
mark  of  Meredith's  genius  as  a  novelist. 
Both  his  temper  and  character  appear 
here.  That  is  why  we  dare  not  "  skip  " 
in  reading  him;  if  we  do  we  shall  surely 
miss  some  vital,  revealing  phrase — often 
a  word  even.  Meredith's  phrases  are 
packed  with  attributes,  they  are  full  of 
suggestive  power.  A  living  picture  may 
be  in  a  line : 

"  She  seized  her  anger  as  if  it  were  a 
curling  snake  and  cast  it  off " ;  "  she 
had  at  times  the  look  of  the  nymph  that 
had  gazed  too  long  at  the  faun,  and  has 
unwittingly  copied  his  lurking  lip  and 
long  sliding  eye  " ;  "  he  saw  the  Goddess 
Modesty  guarding  Purity  " ;  "  a  dainty 
rogue  in  porcelain  " ;  "  her  incandescent 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

reason";  "she  went  down  stairs  like  a 
cascade " ;  "  she  was  fleet ;  she  ran  as 
though  a  hundred  little  feet  were  bear- 
ing her  onward  smooth  as  water,  so 
swiftly  did  the  hidden  pair  multiply  one 
another  to  speed  her  .  .  .  her  flight 
wound  to  an  end  in  a  dozen  twittering 
steps,  and  she  sank."  Is  it  any  wonder 
that  the  boy  Cross  jay,  seeing  this  fleet- 
ing vision,  should  translate  his  admira- 
tion, as  the  author  tells  us  he  did,  "  into 
a  dogged  frenzy  of  pursuit"?  He 
would  have  been  deserving  of  a  spank- 
ing had  he  merely  looked  and  not  moved. 
I  am  quoting  from  Meredith's  The 
Egoist,  the  greatest  novel  in  the  Eng- 
lish language,  with  its  superb  mastery  of 
the  stuff  of  life  and  its  consummate  art. 
It  is  a  comedy  and  a  tragedy  so  inter- 
woven that  we  cannot  say  where  one  be- 
gins and  the  other  ends.  It  is  human 


READING  NOVELS 

nature  playing  the  game  of  life,  with 
none  of  the  "  dust  of  the  struggling 
outer  world,  no  mire,  no  violent  crashes, 
to  make  the  correctness  of  the  represen- 
tation convincing."  The  game  played 
here  is  that  played  in  the  so-called  higher 
social  circles,  where  Meredith  tells  us, 
the  Comic  Spirit  has  quite  a  good  time 
of  it.  But  the  stage  might  just  as  well 
be  the  great  stage  of  life  itself.  Mere- 
dith's is  no  suburban  genius.  His  mi- 
crocosm instantly  spreads  itself  out  to 
the  size  of  the  great  globe  itself.  The 
gentleman,  the  student,  the  scholar,  the 
soldier,  the  boy,  the  country  dame,  the 
maiden  sisters,  the  lovely  heroines  of 
this  book  are  really  making  believe  on 
the  stage  of  Patterne  Hall.  The  names 
they  are  given  here  are  mere  marks  for 
identification,  so  that  we  may  the  more 
easily  follow  the  scenes  and  acts  to  the 
[245] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

denouement.  In  reality  the  stage  is  life's 
stage  anywhere  on  the  earth  where  men 
and  women  gather  together  to  live  what 
is  called  the  social  life.  The  specific 
names  of  the  dramatis  personce  have  but 
to  be  thought  of  in  the  generic  terms  I 
have  given,  and  the  book  becomes  a 
macrocosm.  It  is  gorgeously  amusing, 
splendidly  laughter-moving;  and  yet  we 
would  not  be  surprised  if  we  saw  peep- 
ing at  us  from  the  side-wings  the  pained 
mask  of  Tragedy.  Meredith,  of  course, 
would  not  commit  such  a  betise;  but  we 
do  not  forget  that  there  is  this  tragic 
other-side  to  this  smiling  face  of  Com- 
edy. We  experience  strange  twinges 
and  our  smiles  suddenly  stiifen.  A  pa- 
thos of  emotion  envelops  us,  and  our 
laughter  disappears  into  the  sterner 
lines.  All  this  comes  from  our  realiza- 
tion of  life  under  the  spell  of  this  arch- 
[246] 


READING  NOVELS 

magician.  We  have  been  told  that  the 
people  in  "  real  life  "  never  talk  as  do 
the  people  in  George  Meredith's  books, 
and  that  The  Egoist,  in  particular,  sins  in 
this  respect.  Surely  this  is  childish  petu- 
lancy.  The  question  is  not  whether  the 
people  of  The  Egoist  talk  like  the  peo- 
ple we  know  in  "  real  life  " ;  the  ques- 
tion is  do  they  talk  like  the  people  we 
know  in  The  Egoist?  When  we  know 
the  people  in  The  Egoist  we  won't  ask 
the  question.  It  is  Meredith's  business 
to  raise  the  mind  by  accommodating  the 
images  of  things  to  our  desires,  and  not 
to  lower  the  mind  by  subjecting  it  to 
things.  And  he  accomplishes  this  busi- 
ness superbly. 

Meredith's  men  and  women  are  types, 
not  individuals.      Sir  Willoughby  Pat- 
terne,    Richard    Feverel,    Harry    Rich- 
mond, Tony  Gammon,  Dr.  Middleton, 
[247] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

Vernon  Whitford,  Clara  Middletony 
Rhoda  Fleming,  Lucy  Feverel,  Lsetetia 
Dale,  Janet  Ilchester,  Diana  (wonder- 
ful Diana!)  of  the  Crossways,  and  a 
host  of  others,  are  of  the  great  world  of 
life.  We  recognize  them  instantly  now 
that  Meredith  has  recreated  them  for  us. 
His  heroes  and  heroines  are  character- 
ized by  one  supreme  quality — the  quality 
of  courage.  Courage  to  dare  to  be  one's 
self  in  the  face  of  all  odds,  that  was 
Meredith's  medicine  for  the  ills  of  life. 
It  was  his  solution  of  its  problem  also. 
Meredith  had  had  to  solve  that  problem 
for  himself,  not  without  great  agony  of 
soul.  He  had  known  poverty,  had  ex- 
perienced sorrows,  and  had  lived  and 
laboured  in  loneliness  and  neglect.  But 
courage  helped  him — courage  and  the 
poetic  spirit  in  him.  Meredith  was  a 
poet,  perhaps,  more  than  he  was  a  nov- 
[248] 


READING  NOVELS 

elist.  Life  was  a  revelation  to  him;  he 
saw  it  in  visions  and  in  relations.  The 
poet  in  him  made  him  a  greater  artist  as 
novelist;  and  this  it  is,  perhaps,  which 
imposes  on  his  readers  a  harder  task  in 
order  to  receive  all  the  suggestions  by 
which  he  is  trying  to  reveal  what  he  sees. 
But  then  is  not  that  what  life  itself  asks 
of  us?  And  life  imposes  this  task  with 
but  occasional  glimpses  of  joy;  Mere- 
dith, however,  bathes  us  in  the  atmos- 
phere of  his  splendid  wisdom  and  rest- 
ful humour. 

I  am  afraid  I  have  exceeded  the  limits 
of  space  permitted  for  this  chapter, 
which  has  already  extended  to  greater 
length  than  I  intended;  but,  indeed,  I 
can  but  touch  the  fringes  of  so  magnifi- 
cent a  subject.  I  have  said  almost  noth- 
ing of  Cervantes,  of  Bunyan,  of  Sterne, 
of  Stendhal,  Flaubert,  Thomas  Hardy 
[249] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

and  Henry  James.  Don  Quixote  might 
have  a  book  to  itself;  The  Pilgrim's 
Progress,  though  hardly  a  novel,  is  a 
beautiful  expression  of  an  experience  of 
life;  and  the  wit  of  Tristram  Shandy  is 
an  abiding  glory  of  English  literature. 
All  these  books  are  so  differently  appeal- 
ing and  yet  each  in  its  way  so  graciously 
pleasure  giving.  I  have  but  touched  on 
the  Chartreuse  de  Parme,  that  masterly 
analysis  of  human  love.  I  have  but 
hinted  at  the  great  genius  of  Turgenieff , 
that  tender  spirit  of  Russia,  whose  pa- 
thos is  like  a  balm  or  a  perfume,  and  to 
whom  his  native  land  was  an  inspiration. 
I  might  have  found  space  for  Victor 
Hugo's  Les  Miserables  and  spoken  of 
the  noble  spirit  it  breathes  in  spite  of  its 
questionable  art.  I  ought  to  have  said 
a  word  or  two  for  George  Eliot's  Mid- 
dlemarch  and  The  Mill  on  the  Floss,  two 
[250] 


READING  NOVELS 

books  that  may  be  read  again  and  again. 
Thomas  Hardy's  The  Return  of  the  Na- 
tive, The  Woodlanders  and  Tess  of  the 
D'Urbervilles  are  alone  enough  to  make 
their  writer's  fame  immortal.  And  what 
could  I  say  of  Dumas's  D'Artagnan 
stories  that  has  not  been  better  said  by 
the  thousands  of  their  readers  who  have 
basked  in  the  sunshine  of  their  glorious 
air?  If  my  readers  are  curious  to  know 
more  of  him,  I  recommend  them  to  read 
Stevenson's  essay  on  Dumas's  Le  Ti- 
comte  de  Bragelonne,  and  if  they  do  not 
take  to  the  Vicomte  instantly,  then — 
well,  it  will  be  a  pity.  Flaubert's  mas- 
terpiece, Madame  Bovary,  and  Anthony 
Trollope's  Earchester  stories,  must  re- 
ceive special  mention  from  me,  and  I 
must  again  name  Reade's  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth,  that  splendid  panorama 
of  mediaeval  days.  All  these  books  and 
[251] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

many  others  whose  authors  I  have  but 
indicated  by  name,  I  can  only  beg  my 
readers  to  read  with  the  assurance  that 
there  are  happy  hours  in  store  for  them 
in  their  companionship. 

A  few  words  of  Nathaniel  Haw- 
thorne and  The  Scarlet  Letter,  and  this 
chapter  must  end.  Hawthorne  pos- 
sessed what  few  writers  possessed  in 
equally  high  degree,  the  power  to  realize 
an  impression  of  the  supernatural  by 
creating  its  atmosphere  without  in  any 
other  way  defining  it.  His  greatest 
novel,  however,  is  not  touched  by  this 
atmosphere,  it  is  placed  in  the  open  air 
of  Puritan  New  England.  Professor 
Woodberry  has  amply  dealt  with  The 
Scarlet  Letter  in  his  Life  of  Hawthorne, 
and  my  readers  will  find  the  chapter  de- 
voted to  it  most  instructive  reading. 
Professor  Woodberry,  however,  does  not 
[252] 


READING  NOVELS 

consider  this  novel  as  Hawthorne's  best, 
because,  in  his  opinion,  it  distorts  the 
spiritual  life.  In  Hawthorne's  story,  he 
says,  "  mercy  is  but  a  hope,"  and  "  evil 
is  presented  as  a  thing  without  remedy, 
that  cannot  change  its  nature,"  and  be- 
cause of  these  faults,  as  they  are  deemed, 
the  book  is  not  true  to  life.  I  would*  beg 
a  moment  in  which  to  justify  Haw- 
thorne. To  my  mind,  it  is  just  because 
"  mercy  is  but  a  hope  "  and  "  evil  is  a 
thing  without  remedy  that  cannot  change 
its  nature  "  that  Hawthorne  in  realizing 
this,  saw  profoundly  into  the  truth  of 
life.  A  theory  of  universal  government 
might  fit  things  more  in  accordance  with 
our  hopes,  but  Hawthorne  was  not  con- 
sidering our  hopes;  he  was  telling  of 
life.  And  in  life  as  we  live  it,  the  hope 
for  mercy  can  only  be  realized,  in  any 
true  sense  of  realization,  by  making  of 
[253] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

evil  a  stepping-stone  to  good.  Virtue 
means  a  conquest  over  evil;  and  those 
who  attempt  the  struggle  do  so  because 
of  the  demands  of  their  nature.  A 
theory  rarely  helps  us  in  our  tragic  mo- 
ments. We  have  then  to  fall  hack  on 
ourselves,  and  we  are  moved  hy  a  power 
as  much  within  us  as  without  us.  Our 
issue  from  our  afflictions  depends,  in  a 
large  measure,  on  our  habits  of  thought 
and  life,  and  in  the  harmony  of  these 
with  the  highest  social  life.  In  Hester's 
life  the  power  without  her  was  greater 
than  the  power  within  her ;  hence  the  piti- 
fulness  of  her  story.  If  Hester's  life 
had  been  fulfilled  of  love  and  not  with 
the  spirit  of  Puritan  Christianity,  love 
would  have  saved  her  where  her  creed 
could  not,  and  Hawthorne's  story  might 
never  have  been  written.  But  Haw- 
thorne's The  Scarlet  Letter  must  be 
[254] 


READING  NOVELS 

judged,  not  from  the  sectarian's  stand- 
point, but  from  the  standpoint  of  art. 
The  question  is  not,  does  it  tally  with  any 
creed?  The  question  is,  does  it  succeed 
in  making  us  realize  what  Hawthorne 
attempted?  Speaking  for  myself  I 
must  answer  with  a  profound  affirmation. 
The  impression  Hawthorne  leaves  on 
us  is  the  impression  made  by  all  great 
imaginative  writers.  The  contemplation 
of  creation  is  always  inspiring;  the  con- 
templation of  art  must  surely  affect  us 
with  a  sense  of  grateful  humility,  if  only 
in  the  thought  that  these  master-workers 
have  laboured  for  our  sakes;  that  it  was 
for  us  they  lived  strenuous  days  and 
walked  the  rugged  steeps  of  experience. 
What  they  gathered  in  pain  they  have 
brought  to  us  for  our  pleasure.  In  this 
largesse  the  novelist  is  the  most  boun- 
teous of  givers. 

[255] 


VI 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 
READING  HISTORY 
AND  BIOGRAPHY 


THE  PLEASURE  OF  READING 
HISTORY   AND   BIOGRAPHY 


UR  schools  of  learning  do  not 
provide  chairs  of  fiction  and 
biography,  and  even  poetry 
las  been  almost  overlooked.  The  read- 
ing of  novels  and  biographies  is  yet  free 
for  the  pleasure-seeker,  and  poetry  may 
still  continue  to  flower  by  the  wayside. 
History,  however,  has  long  been  received 
into  monastic  hospitals,  nursed  by  devout 
ascetics,  and  compelled  to  don  the  melan- 
choly robes  of  their  order.  She  now 
looks  sternly  and  coldly  at  us  from  be- 
hind barred  gates;  and  woe  betide  the 
bold  adventurer  who  dares  enter  unper- 
mitted  and  unaccompanied  her  cloistered 
walks. 

[259] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

"  History  is  Truth,"  exclaim  these 
augurs.  Truth  must  be  kept  chaste,  at 
any  cost,  even  at  the  cost  of  itself,  from 
the  polluting  touch  of  the  imaginative 
and  impassioned  layman.  She  must  be 
guarded  by  her  high  priests  and  kept 
sacred,  and  only  visible  through  iron 
railings.  People  have  been  too  familiar 
with  her ;  they  dressed  her  so  that  she  was 
quite  unlike  her  real  self.  It  is  different 
now.  Now  she  is  the  handmaiden  of 
science  and  philosophy.  Well,  ye  men 
of  science  and  philosophy,  show  us  Truth 
as  History! 

They  have  responded  to  the  demand 
and  revealed  her.  There  she  is,  in  all 
her  nakedness !  Not  a  sight,  I  am  afraid, 
to  stir  the  pia  mater  of  the  true  lover 
who  looks  long  and  wonderingly  at  this 
starved  and  bony  apparition.  "  Is  this 
Truth? "  he  murmurs;  "  then  give  me  the 
[260] 


READING   HISTORY 

other  thing.  I  think  she  would  look  more 
presentable,  at  least,  if  she  were  a  little 
draped."  And  he  turns  aside,  carefully 
replacing  the  hundred  and  fifty-first  vol- 
ume of  the  famous  History  of  the  World 
by  that  eminent  scholar  of  Heidelberg 
or  Bonn  or  Jena  (I  forget,  for  the  mo- 
ment, which),  and  smilingly  takes  down 
Dumas'  Le  Vicomte  de  Bragelonne. 

I  suppose  it  must  be  the  old  childish  in- 
stinct in  us  that  still  continues  to  draw 
us  back  from  school  and  permits  us  but 
to  creep  like  snails  unwillingly  to  it;  but 
the  histories  of  our  pedagogues  and  pro- 
fessors are,  truly,  not  very  attractive. 
When  I  come  to  think  on  it  I  believe  the 
child's  instinct  was  right,  after  all,  in 
turning  its  head  away  from  the  unin- 
viting and  unsavoury  information  offered 
it  as  food  for  its  mind.  The  mental  in- 
digestion that  invariably  followed  fully 
[261] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

justified  its  aversion.  And  we,  who  are 
no  longer  children,  surely  we  waste  much 
precious  time  in  attempting  to  devour 
the  bulky,  spiceless,  unripe  chunks  served 
up  as  History.  What  a  time  we  might 
be  having  instead  with  Homer  and  Lu- 
cian  and  Shakespeare!  This  modern 
worship  at  the  feet  of  the  goddess  Fact, 
is  certainly  robbing  us  of  our  virtues. 
Already  the  boy  of  ten  is  an  expert 
mathematician  and  can  even  calculate  his 
chances  on  a  bet.  If  you  speak  to  him 
of  George  Washington  he  is  ready  with 
dates;  if  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  he  will, 
probably,  quote  you  the  oracles  of  Poor 
Richard's  Almanack.  But  ask  him,  aye, 
or  her,  of  Achilles  or  Siegfried,  or  King 
Arthur,  or  Proserpine  or  Helen  of  Troy 
or  even  of  Cinderella,  and  he  will  look 
at  you  with  a  wise  eye  and  perhaps  tell 
you,  "You're  joshing."  "What  is  Hec- 
[262] 


READING  HISTORY 

uba  to  him  or  he  to  Hecuba,"  that  he 
should  spend  an  hour  with  her  instead  of 
earning  a  prize  for  selling  "  The  Satur- 
day Evening  Post "  ?  He  is  too  busy 
with  Fact. 

There  is,  probably,  no  denying  the  fact 
that  Julius  Caesar  landed  in  England  in 
the  year  55  B.C.,  or  the  fact  that  William 
of  Normandy  fought  and  overcame 
Harold  the  Saxon  in  the  year  1066  A.  D., 
but  I  confess,  I  never  could,  and  cannot 
yet,  see  what  of  Truth  there  is  in  either 
of  these  facts.  Yet  it  is  not  exaggera- 
tion to  say  that  history  as  taught  in  the 
schools  is  little  more  than  tables  of  such 
facts,  garnished  occasionally  if  you  like, 
but  gritty  when  the  teeth  get  into  them. 
Truth  is  surely  more  than  Fact!  If  it 
were  not  history  as  literature  would  be 
impossible — and  there  would,  probably, 
be  fewer  marriages  than  there  are.  To 
[263] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

the  lover  the  truth  is  not  the  fact;  the 
truth  is  in  his  relation  to  the  woman  he 
loves.  In  that  truth  there  are  infinite 
possibilities  of  delightful  experiences. 
In  the  fact,  woman,  there  is  none.  The 
truth  of  history,  likewise,  is  not  in  the 
facts,  but  in  their  relations  to  us;  and  in 
those  relations  there  are  also  infinite  pos- 
sibilities of  delightful  experiences.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  historian  who  is  pos- 
sessed of  the  facts  and  who  is,  presum- 
ably, in  experiential  relation  to  them, 
to  relate  them  to  us  so  that  we  shall  have 
these  delightful  experiences.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  historian  has  not  often  seen 
his  business  from  that  point  of  view;  or 
else  he  has  not  been  able  to  acquit  him- 
self as  artist ;  for  the  result  is  not  a  ban- 
quet, but  a  Barmecide  feast.  The  facts 
of  history,  as  he  tells  them,  look  to  us 
somewhat  like  the  imitation  candy  we 
[264] 


READING  HISTORY 

often  see  displayed  in  shop  windows  to 
attract  the  passer-by.  The  thing  looks 
like  candy,  has  all  the  outward  seeming 
of  candy,  and  might  even  pass  for  candy 
were  we  not  moved  to  taste  it.  When  we 
do  taste  it  we  become  disappointingly 
aware  that  it  is  but  a  piece  of  wood 
painted  to  look  like  the  real  thing.  The 
reading  of  history  offers  a  parallel  ex- 
perience. There  is  no  true  pleasure  in 
looking  at  the  thing  in  the  window;  the 
pleasure  is  in  tasting  it.  There  is  no 
real  pleasure  in  reading  the  histories  of 
the  schools;  the  pleasure  comes  from  liv- 
ing the  past  over  again;  and  that,  unfor- 
tunately, is  not  what  we  are  invited  to 
do. 

What  historians  have  been  accustomed 
to  do  is  to  lay  before  us,  for  our  inspec- 
tion, as  it  were,  all  the  facts  they  could 
vouch  for  or  that  they  had  authority  for. 
[265] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

Our  schoolmasters  are  doing  exactly  the 
same  thing  for  the  children  at  school. 
Take  any  school  manual  of  history  and  it 
will  he  found  to  consist  of  a  mass  of  more 
or  less  accurate  facts  arranged  in  tabu- 
lated form — either  under  the  heads  of 
Kings  and  Queens,  or  under  the  captions 
of  presidential  administrations.  The 
child  is  expected  to  get  "  chock  full "  of 
this  science,  so-called,  and  what  is  worse, 
to  be  able  "  to  pass  examinations "  by 
displaying  a  species  of  mental  agility  in 
remembering  "  the  stuff."  What  it  all 
means  the  child  cannot  know,  even  if  the 
teachers  themselves  had  the  ability  to  tell 
it — there  is  no  time  for  that.  As  to 
the  pleasure  to  be  derived  from  this 
study,  the  less  said  about  it  the  better; 
the  children's  nightly  agonies  at  home 
are  a  sufficient  condemnation  of  the 
"method."  The  writers  of  these  text- 
[266] 


READING  HISTORY 

books  might  answer  by  saying  that  the 
teachers  are  to  blame  for  their  misuse 
of  their  manuals  which  were  intended 
only  as  notes  for  the  teachers'  own  more 
inviting  and  more  interesting  explana- 
tions; that  the  teachers'  duty  is  to 
make  the  study  the  delight  and  the  in- 
spiration it  ought  to  be.  I  reply  that 
teachers,  never  having  experienced  the 
pleasure  themselves,  would,  probably, 
know  nothing  about  it.  And  few  of 
them  do.  History,  which  is  life  in  story, 
may  be  a  prose  epic;  it  should  be  a 
delight  to  the  young;  it  should  be  an 
inspiration  to  every  child  for  noble 
thoughts  and  noble  ambitions;  it  should 
sow  in  him  the  seeds  of  a  pure  love  for 
his  native  land  and  stir  in  him  a  pride  in 
its  citizenship;  and  it  should  bring  him 
lovingly  near  his  fellow-men  all  the 
world  over.  When  history  is  written 
[267] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

as  it  ought  to  be,  teachers  in  schools  will 
find  in  them  the  real  matter  for  countless 
texts,  and  then,  perhaps,  education  com- 
mittees will  see  the  wisdom  of  giving  to 
history  its  important  place  in  their 
schemes  of  instruction,  instead  of,  as 
now,  relegating  it  to  a  subordinate  posi- 
tion. 

I  confess,  I  prefer  Macaulay's  His- 
tory of  England  to  Gardiner's  Great 
Civil  War,  even  though  I  am  perfectly 
aware  that  the  facts  in  Macaulay  are  not 
what  the  professors  say  they  ought  to  be. 
I  have  had  many  delightful  experiences 
in  his  account  of  the  Siege  of  London- 
derry, that  only  a  truth-teller  like  Alex- 
andre  Dumas  could  give  me  in  that  mov- 
ing account  of  the  siege  of  Belle  Isle,  in 
which  great-hearted  Porthos  met  his  fate 
like  a  Titan.  In  saying  this  I  am  not  in- 
tending any  disparagement  of  Professor 
[268] 


READING   HISTORY 

Samuel  Rawson  Gardiner's  learning,  nor 
do  I  wish  to  question  his  own  personal 
relation  to  the  truth.  His  book  is  the 
fact-authority  on  the  period.  I  do  not 
doubt  he  had  himself  very  many  experi- 
ences of  pleasure  from  his  private  re- 
lation to  Truth.  But  that  only  makes 
me  regret  all  the  more  that  he  did  not  let 
me  share  them  with  him.  You  seem  to  be 
serving  an  apprenticeship  to  Gardiner's 
profound  knowledge.  With  Macau- 
lay,  on  the  other  hand,  you  are  jour- 
neyman with  him  on  the  old  roads — mas- 
ter and  man  working  together,  eating 
and  drinking  together,  and  fighting  and 
living  together.  Hang  his  Whiggish 
politics!  You  care  not  a  rap  for  them, 
even  when  he  shoves  them  under  your 
nose.  You  are  too  rapt  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  marching  to  the  splendid  music 
of  his  resounding  sentences.  You  rather 
[269] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

enjoy  being  a  Tory,  if  you  are  one,  and 
are  ready  to  cry  out: 

"  King  Charles,  and  who'll  do  him  right  now? 
K'mg  Charles,  and  who's  ripe  for  fight  now? 
Give  a  rouse,  and  here's  m  hell's  despite  now, 
King  Charles!  " 

This  is  living  history;  this  is  what  his- 
tory should  compel  us  to  do;  the  dead 
past  must  he  resurrected  and  made  to  live 
again  in  us.  "  Time,"  said  Emerson, 
"  dissipates  to  shining  ether  the  angu- 
larity of  facts.  No  anchor,  no  cable,  no 
fences  avail  to  keep  a  fact  a  fact.  Baby- 
lon and  Troy  and  Tyre,  and  even  early 
Rome,  are  passing  already  into  fiction. 
The  Garden  of  Eden,  the  Sun  standing 
still  in  Gibeon,  is  poetry  thenceforward 
to  all  mankind.  Who  cares  what  the 
fact  was,  when  we  have  thus  made  a  con- 
stellation of  it  to  hang  in  heaven  an  im- 
[270] 


READING  HISTORY 

mortal  sign? "  Our  writers  of  history 
must  take  example  from  Time  and  dissi- 
pate their  facts  into  shining  ether;  they 
must  help  us  to  hang  immortal  signs  in 
heaven.  Only  thus  will  history  repeat  it- 
self in  our  lives  with  fuller  f ruitfulness, 
and  so  help  us  to  march  with  the  proces- 
sion erect  and  debonair. 

Of  late,  however,  the  splendid  possi- 
bilities of  History  as  a  pleasure-giver 
have  been  discovered  by  a  few  prose 
writers  of  real  imaginative  power.  These 
have  broken  ground,  so  to  speak,  to  the 
making  of  open  roads  where  sky  may  be 
seen  touching  the  earth.  Green's  His- 
tory of  the  English  People  and  McMas- 
ter's  History  of  the  People  of  the 
United  States  have  done  much  to  lay  out 
the  line  of  travel.  Gregorovius's  His- 
tory of  the  City  of  Rome  is  an  unusual 
achievement  for  a  German  which  should 
[271] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

prove  an  excellent  example  for  his  coun- 
trymen to  follow.  Froude's  History  of 
England  is  a  master's  work,  perhaps  the 
best  history  of  the  period  it  deals  with 
in  the  English  language.  Froude  has 
been  contemptuously  spoken  of  by  the 
professors — a  certain  sign  that  the  true 
spirit  was  in  him — but  even  these  are  be- 
coming aware  that  there  is  more  in 
Froude  than  they  give  him  credit  for. 
Carlyle,  also,  came  in  for  a  share  of  pro- 
fessional patronage  and  academic  con- 
descension, if  not  disdain,  and  Carlyle's 
French  Revolution  is  a  mighty  conjurer 
of  the  imagination  to  the  free  play  of 
the  gay  spirit;  it  is  better  than  a  cycle  of 
Cathay.  Scott's  Tales  of  a  Grandfather 
is  scorned  by  our  guardians  of  the  god- 
dess History;  but  I  am  much  mistaken  if 
these  same  Tales  have  not  done  far  bet- 
ter service  for  the  children  of  the  Gram- 


READING   HISTORY 

pians  and  the  Lowlands  than  Buchanan 
or  Robertson  or  Burton. 

Motley's  Dutch  Republic,,  Prescott's 
Conquest  of  Peru,  his  Conquest  of 
Mexico  and  Parkman's  historical  writ- 
ings have,  none  of  them,  received  the 
affirmative  praise  of  professional  ap- 
proval, yet  there  are  few  historical  writ- 
ings in  any  language  that  have  their 
power  to  send  the  mind  disporting  in  ex- 
alting pleasure.  Prescott  is  to  be  "  re- 
vised "  for  his  "  facts!  "  Let  us  hope  the 
reviser  will  content  himself  in  the  mod- 
esty of  notes  and  appendices,  and  not 
obtrude  his  pointed  features  in  Prescott's 
own  clothes.  We  have  to  thank  our  stars 
that  Motley's  stately  and  picturesque 
sentences  are  still  permitted  to  pleasure 
us. 

The  right  mind  for  the  writing  of  his- 
tory might  be  somewhat  careless  of  what 
[273] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

became  of  the  facts  if  it  would  picture 
the  truth;  it  would  be  apt  to  transgress 
every  deep-rooted  convention  and  to 
break  every  established  law.  The  con- 
ventional historian,  bound  by  rule  and 
careful  of  tradition,  does  not  realize  that 
the  relation  of  Cromwell's  life,  for  in- 
stance, is  not  completed  by  the  account 
of  his  birth,  education,  incidents  dealing 
with  his  entrance  into  national  affairs, 
and  the  many  other  facts  which  are  de- 
tailed in  manuals.  All  these  things  to- 
gether do  not  make  up  the  Cromwell  who 
lived  and  subverted  a  kingdom  and  con- 
verted a  people.  There  is  a  Cromwell  in 
history  who  was  all  these  and  something 
more — a  radiating  and  energizing  spirit 
— that  is  the  Cromwell  we  want  to  know, 
because  that  Cromwell  will  be  alive  for 
us.  But  that  Cromwell  we  do  not  get. 
Every  fact  that  was  related  to  him  and 
[274] 


READING   HISTORY 

to  which  he  was  related  is  given  so 
much  prominence  (as  if  the  facts  could 
explain  the  man)  that  the  man  himself 
is  lost  in  the  mass  of  the  lifeless  rubbish; 
for  rubbish  it  is,  if  it  hampers  the 
man's  movements  on  the  pictured  pages 
of  his  "  life."  If  facts  are  to  be  insisted 
on,  let  them  be  revealed  in  the  influences 
they  had  on  his  conduct,  his  thought,  his 
spoken  words,  his  living  relation  with  the 
men  of  his  time ;  do  not  weigh  him  down 
with  their  apparel.  Perhaps  Froude 
was  right,  and  what  I  am  asking  for  is 
beyond  the  scope  of  the  historian's  art, 
is  outside  the  field  of  prose,  and  belongs 
properly  to  poetry.  If  this  be  so,  then 
is  there  no  real  pleasure  to  be  obtained 
from  the  reading  of  history — nothing 
but  a  casual  interest  from  a  more  or  less 
well-strung  catalogue  of  names,  dates, 
events,  more  or  less  important  and  use- 
[275] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

ful.     But  I  am  not  quite  convinced  of 
Froude's  opinion: — 

'  We  compare,"  he  says,  "  the  man  as 
the  historian  represents  him  with  the 
track  of  his  path  through  the  world. 
The  work  is  the  work  of  a  giant;  the 
man,  stripped  of  the  vulgar  appendages 
with  which  the  stunted  imagination  of 
his  biographer  may  have  set  him  off,  is 
full  of  meannesses  and  littlenesses,  and 
is  scarcely  greater  than  one  of  ourselves. 
Prose,  that  is,  has  attempted  something 
to  which  it  is  not  equal.  It  describes  a 
figure  which  it  calls  Caesar;  but  it  is  not 
Caesar,  it  is  a  monster.  For  the  same 
reason,  prose  fictions,  novels  and  the  like, 
are  worthless  for  more  than  a  momentary 
purpose.  The  life  which  they  are  able  to 
represent  is  not  worth  representing. 
There  is  no  person  so  poor  in  his  own 
eyes  as  not  to  gaze  with  pleasure  in  a 
[276] 


READING   HISTORY 

looking-glass;  and  the  prose  age  may 
value  its  own  image  in  the  novel.  But 
the  value  of  all  such  representations  is 
ephemeral.  It  is  with  the  poet's  art  as 
with  the  sculptor's — sandstone  will  not 
carve  like  marble,  its  texture  is  too  loose 
to  retain  a  sharply  moulded  outline. 
The  actions  of  men,  if  they  are  true, 
noble,  and  genuine,  are  strong  enough  to 
bear  the  form  and  bear  the  polish  of 
verse;  if  loose  or  feeble,  they  crumble 
away  into  the  softer  undulations  of 
prose." 

Excellently  well  put;  and  yet  I  feel  as 
if  Froude  had  allowed  himself  to  be  car- 
ried away  by  his  metaphor.  The  lan- 
guage the  poet  uses  is  the  same  language 
the  historian  employs;  it  is  the  one  me- 
dium in  which  both  work.  It  depends  on 
something  which  is  not  in  the  medium 
whether  it  shall  carve  like  marble  or 
[277] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

crumble  away  like  sandstone.  These 
qualities  are  not  in  the  nature  of  lan- 
guage; they  appear  in  the  use  made  of 
language;  they  depend  on  the  quality  of 
the  writer's  creative  imagination,  and  on 
the  degree  of  his  power  to  embody  it  in 
his  medium.  The  fault  is  not  with  the 
prose;  the  fault  is  in  the  historian  with 
his  "  stunted  imagination."  The  writer 
with  the  imagination  and  the  power  does 
not  complain  of  his  medium;  indeed,  it 
is  a  large  part  of  his  pleasure  to  compel 
his  medium  to  yield  to  the  demands  he 
makes  on  it  in  order  that  it  should  shape 
itself  to  his  ideal  images.  I  might  quote 
Froude  himself  against  himself  by  cit- 
ing his  beautiful  essay  on  "  England's 
Forgotten  Worthies,"  or  his  fine  picture 
of  Alexander  of  Abonotichus,  or  his 
masterly  studies  of  Erasmus  and  Caesar. 
To  say  that  novelists  are  worthless  for 
[278] 


READING  HISTORY 

more  than  a  momentary  purpose  is  to 
forget  De  Foe's  History  of  the  Plague, 
his  History  of  the  Great  Fire,  Fielding's 
Tom  Jones  and  Thackeray's  Esmond. 
Had  Froude  been  aware  when  he  wrote 
his  essay  on  Homer,  from  which  I  have 
quoted,  of  Pater's  Marius  the  Epicu- 
rean, George  Meredith's  The  Egoist  and 
Harry  Richmond  and  Charles  Reade's 
The  Cloister  and  the  Hearth,  I  am  sure 
he  would  have  hesitated  to  estimate  the 
novel  so  lowly.  I  cannot  well  conceive 
a  poet  satisfying  me  more  amply  of  his 
heroes  than  these  prose  writers  have  suc- 
ceeded in  doing  for  theirs. 

Facts !  There  are  more  facts  now  at  the 
disposal  of  the  historian  than  he  knows 
what  to  do  with.  There  are  more  facts 
in  archives  and  repositories  about  Oliver 
Cromwell  than  Walter  Pater  possessed 
for  his  Marius.  And  yet  Marius,  who 
[279] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

may  have  lived  a  millennium  before 
Cromwell,  is  a  living  man  to  the  reader; 
whereas  no  historian  who  has  subjected 
CromweB  to  the  heroic  treatment,  has  so 
far  succeeded  in  making  him  live  as  the 
novelist  makes  Marius  live.  Even  in 
Carlyle's  stupendous  story  Cromwell  has 
not  that  abiding  living  value  to  us  that 
Marius  has.  What  has  any  historian 
done  for  Alexander  the  Great,  Julius 
Caesar  or  Napoleon,  that  Dumas  did  for 
D'Artagnan?  Does  Erasmus  stand  out 
in  history  as  his  father  does  in  Charles 
Reade's  romance?  Is  Mark  Antony  as 
real  to  us  in  any  history  of  Rome  as 
Meredith  has  made  real  Roy  Richmond? 
It  is  not  to  the  point  to  say  that  Marius 
and  D'Artagnan  and  Gerard  and  Roy 
Richmond  never  really  lived  and  are  but 
creatures  of  the  novelist's  imagination. 
What  more  are  Alexander  the  Great, 
[280] 


Julius  Caesar,  Erasmus  of  Rotterdam, 
and  Mark  Antony,  to  any  historian? 
Does  he  know  anything  more  of  them 
than  what  his  imagination  tells  him? 
Legend  and  story  and  document  and 
painted  likeness  are,  when  all  is  said  and 
done,  but  hints  and  helps  to  the  better 
realization  of  the  man;  they  are  not  the 
man.  If  anything,  these  should  advan- 
tage the  historian  and  enable  him  to 
reach  a  higher  degree  of  excellence.  The 
trouble  with  the  historian  is,  not  that  his 
prose  is  sandstone,  but  that  he  has  no 
vitalizing  imagination.  A  great  man 
greatly  conceived  will  live  in  prose  that 
will  carve  like  marble,  as  he  lives  in  po- 
etry, if  his  creator  can  use  his  medium. 
What  the  historian  shall  do  is  to  imagine 
him  greatly,  conceive  him  greatly,  and 
realize  him  greatly. 

The  historian,   probably,   is  not  alto- 
[281] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

gether  to  blame;  for  he  is  but  following 
the  traditions.  What  would  be  said  of 
him  were  he  to  make  of  the  Due  de  Lau- 
zun  what  Dumas  made  of  D'Artagnan, 
even  could  he  afford  the  necessary  space? 
Did  the  historian  dare  to  write  history 
after  such  a  fashion,  or  after  the  fashion 
of  Thackeray  with  Esmond  or  Scott 
with  Rob  Roy  and  Nigel,  I  venture  to 
assert  that  he  would  be  overwhelmed 
with  derision  and  obloquy.  He  would 
be  told  that  his  imagination  had  got  the 
better  of  his  judgment;  that  he  had  no 
sense  of  proportion,  and  that  he  had  de- 
graded history  to  the  level  of  fiction. 
Froude  himself  passed  through  such  an 
experience;  even  Green  is  being  looked 
at  askance  for  his  patriotic  enthusiasm, 
and  Herodotus,  of  course,  has  always 
been  smiled  at  condescendingly.  The 
historical  manner  and  method  are  not 
[282] 


READING  HISTORY 

conducive  to  pleasure;  that  would  seem 
to  be  the  conclusion  of  the  matter.  Yet 
I  cannot  help  believing  that  were  an  An- 
tony to  rise  up  with  the  spirit  of  a  Brutus 
in  him  he  would  make  Caesar  live  again. 

"  There  is  no  great  and  no  small, 
To  the  Soul  that  maketh  all; 
And  where  it  cometh  all  things  are; 
And  it  cometh  everywhere. 

"  I  am  owner  of  the  sphere, 
Of  the  seven  stars  and  the  solar  year, 
Of  Ccesar's  hand,  and  Plato's  brain, 
Of   Lord   Christ's   heart     and   Shakespeare's 
strain." 

Our  classic  historians  were  not  creative 
artists;  they  did  not  conceive  their  art 
from  the  artist's  point  of  view.  They 
mastered  and  marshalled  the  facts  of  the 
past;  gave  them  colour  and  dignity  and 
the  pomp  of  glorious  circumstance,  and 
marched  them  past  us  like  some  magnifi- 
cent pageant.  Looking  on  at  this  splen- 
[283] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

did  show  there  is  a  pleasure  to  be  ex- 
perienced. It  is  not  the  highest  form  of 
pleasure;  but  it  is  worth  having,  even  at 
the  price  we  have  to  pay  for  it.  Gib- 
bon's supreme  mastery  over  his  facts, 
and  his  splendid  ability  to  order  and  ar- 
range them  to  advantage  are  very  im- 
pressive in  the  dignified  sentences  of  The 
Roman  Empire.  There  is  pleasure  here, 
though  I  should  hesitate  to  urge  the 
reading  of  this  work  for  the  sake  of  the 
pleasure.  I  would  say,  rather,  that  it 
was  a  duty  to  read  it.  I  would  say  the 
same  of  Thucydides,  Livy,  Grote's  His- 
tory of  Greece  and  Mommsen's  History 
of  Rome.  And  I  would  say  it  was 
neither  a  pleasure  nor  a  duty  to  read 
Hume  and  Smollett's  History  of  Eng- 
land, or  Robertson's  History  of  Scot- 
land, or  Josephus'  History  of  the  Jews, 
or  Guicciardini's  History  of  Italy*  or 
[284] 


READING  HISTORY 

Alison's  History  of  Europe,  or  Burnet's 
History  of  the  Reformation.  I  would 
suggest  that  these  meritorious  and  use- 
ful compendiums  be  permitted  to  occupy 
dignified  seats  in  public  institutions 
where,  occasionally,  they  could  be  ap- 
pealed to  for  judgment. 

To  come  to  the  bed-rock  of  the  matter, 
history  has  value  and  meaning  only,  or 
very  largely,  in  so  far  as  it  is  biography. 
It  is  the  life  lived  that  counts,  that  brings 
the  response  from  us,  and  that  sets  the 
old,  dead  world  dancing  again.  There  is 
much  in  Carlyle's  "  heroes  " ;  for  in  our 
realization  of  them  we  get  an  insight 
into  the  people  and  the  events  that  precip- 
itated them.  The  English  Revolution 
centres  in  Hampden  and  Pym  and  Crom- 
well; the  American  Civil  War  revolves 
around  Abraham  Lincoln;  the  French 
Revolution  surges  and  boils  about  Mira- 
[285] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

beau,  Danton,  Robespierre  and  the  rest; 
Frederick  the  Great  and  Gustavus 
Adolphus  gather  the  clouds  of  their  age 
like  mountains;  Csesar  and  Hannibal, 
Cyrus  and  Alexander,  Moses  and  Ma- 
homet focus  in  themselves  the  triumphal 
marches  of  nations.  Paul  and  Savona- 
rola and  Luther  and  Loyola  and  Wesley 
are  the  people's  pilots  over  the  great 
ocean  of  thought.  The  writers  who 
could  realize  for  us  these  men  would  be 
the  true  historians.  Cellini  in  his  Auto- 
biography has  told  us  more  of  Florence 
and  the  life  of  his  day  than  we  could  get 
from  any  history.  The  pulsating  heart 
of  the  city  is  in  the  book — all  its  mighty 
impulses  and  all  its  passion.  And  what 
an  inspiration  may  come  from  Plutarch's 
Lives!  History  may  enlarge  our  hori- 
zon of  the  laws  of  the  universe,  but  it 
narrows  our  ideas  of  the  individual. 
[286] 


READING  BIOGRAPHY 

Biography  in  magnifying  the  individual 
to  the  heroic  size  "  hitches  him  to  a  star," 
and  the  life-point  spreads  circles  into  in- 
finity. It  would  seem  as  if  the  histories 
of  peoples  were  the  biographies  of  its 
heroes,  so  tremendous  are  the  powers  of 
nature  when  concentrated  in  one  great 
mind.  A  nation  is  latent  in  a  man. 
What  was  doing  in  America  on  the  eve 
of  Abraham  Lincoln's  appearance  on 
the  scene?  A  meaningless  vortex  of 
mighty  forces  pushing  and  straining  and 
swirling  in  a  seeming  gigantic  whirlpool. 
Then  Lincoln  comes,  and  immediately 
the  line  of  direction  is  laid  down,  the 
channel  formed,  and  the  great  cataract 
sweeps  over  the  precipice  to  resume  its 
placid  course,  a  highway  of  progress, 
toward  the  ocean  of  life. 

I  would  ask,  nay  beg,  my  readers  to 
take  up  Richard  Hakluyt's  Voyages  and 
[287] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

Travels — "  travails,"  Hakluyt  writes  the 
word,  and  it  is  the  more  significant  of  the 
two  to  us  to-day — a  most  heartening  and 
uplifting  piece  of  literature  and  a  glory 
to  the  devotional  spirit  of  its  compiler. 
Read  there  what  England's  sailors  did 
in  the  reign  of  good  Queen  Bess.  You 
will  realize  the  meaning  of  history  then, 
in  the  lives  of  the  brave-spirited  and 
stout-hearted  adventurers  who  laid  the 
foundations  of  England's  later  greater 
empire.  And  read  also  Froude's  beauti- 
ful essay  on  "  England's  Forgotten 
Worthies  "  as  an  introduction  to  Hak- 
luyt. 

"  Those  five  volumes  "  (Froude  is  re- 
ferring to  the  edition  of  Hakluyt  pub- 
lished in  1811)  "  may  be  called  the  Prose 
Epic  of  the  modern  English  nation. 
They  contain  the  heroic  tales  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  the  great  men  in  whom  the  new 
[288] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

era  was  inaugurated;  not  mythic,  like  the 
Iliads  and  the  Eddas,  but  plain,  broad 
narratives  of  substantial  facts,  which 
rival  legend  in  interest  and  grandeur. 
What  the  old  epics  were  to  the  royally 
and  nobly  born,  this  modern  epic  is  to  the 
common  people.  We  have  no  longer 
kings  or  princes  for  chief  actors,  to 
whom  the  heroism  like  the  dominion  of 
the  world  had  in  time  past  been  confined. 
But,  as  it  was  in  the  days  of  the  Apos- 
tles, when  a  few  poor  fishermen  from  an 
obscure  lake  in  Palestine  assumed,  under 
the  Divine  mission,  the  spiritual  au- 
thority over  mankind,  so,  in  the  days  of 
our  own  Elizabeth,  the  seamen  from  the 
banks  of  the  Thames,  and  the  Avon,  the 
Plym  and  the  Dart,  self-taught  and  self- 
directed,  with  no  impulse  but  what  was 
beating  in  their  own  royal  hearts,  went 
out  across  the  unknown  seas  fighting, 
[289] 


THE  PLEASURE   OF 

discovering,  colonizing,  and  graved  out 
the  channels,  paving  them  at  last  with 
their  bones,  through  which  the  commerce 
and  enterprise  of  England  has  flowed 
out  over  all  the  world.  We  can  conceive 
nothing,  not  the  songs  of  Homer  him- 
self, which  would  be  read  among  us  with 
more  enthusiastic  interest  than  these 
plain  massive  tales;  and  a  people's  edi- 
tion of  them  in  days  when  the  writings 
of  Ainsworth  and  Eugene  Sue  circulate 
in  tens  of  thousands,  would  perhaps  be 
the  most  blessed  antidote  which  could  be 
bestowed  upon  us.  The  heroes  them- 
selves were  the  men  of  the  people — the 
Joneses,  the  Smiths,  the  Drakes,  the 
Davises;  and  no  courtly  pen,  with  the 
one  exception  of  Raleigh,  lent  its  polish 
or  its  varnish  to  set  them  off.  In  most 
cases  the  captain  himself,  or  his  clerk  or 
servant,  or  some  unknown  gentleman 
[290] 


READING  BIOGRAPHY 

volunteer  sat  down  and  chronicled  the 
voyage  which  he  had  shared,  and  thus  in- 
organically arose  a  collection  of  writings 
which,  with  all  their  simplicity,  are  for 
no  thing  more  striking  than  for  the  high 
moral  beauty,  warmed  with  natural  feel- 
ing, which  displays  itself  through  all 
their  pages.  With  us,  the  sailor  is 
scarcely  himself  beyond  his  quarter-deck. 
If  he  is  distinguished  in  his  profession, 
he  is  professional  merely ;  or  if  he  is  more 
than  that,  he  owes  it  not  to  his  work  as  a 
sailor,  but  to  independent  domestic  cul- 
ture. With  them,  their  profession  was 
the  school  of  their  nature,  a  high  moral 
education  which  most  brought  out  what 
was  most  nobly  human  in  them;  and  the 
wonders  of  earth,  and  air,  and  sea,  and 
sky,  were  a  real  intelligible  language  in 
which  they  heard  Almighty  God  speak- 
ing to  them." 

[291] 


THE   PLEASURE   OF 

This  is  what  the  Bible  did  for  the  early 
Christian  adventurers  who  came  after 
Paul,  and  what  it  still  means  to  those 
who  are  moved  to-day  to  carry  the  torch 
of  truth  and  the  gracious  benignancy  of 
its  kindly  light  to  the  uttermost  corners 
of  the  earth.  This  is  how  Homer's  Iliad 
and  Odyssey  inspired  the  Greeks  to  living 
heroic  lives  and  doing  great  deeds;  this 
is  why  minstrels  sang  the  Song  of  Roland 
and  the  Sagas  on  the  eve  of  battles.  Ex- 
ample is  more  potent  than  precept,  and 
what  man  has  once  dared  man  may  again 
dare.  It  is  in  biography  that  history  re- 
veals its  true  philosophy — the  philosophy 
that  consists,  not  in  a  formulation  of 
laws  which  govern  the  rise  and  fall  of 
nations,  nor  yet  in  the  classification  of 
the  forces  which  precipitate  species  out 
of  their  genera,  but  the  philosophy  that 
is  a  revelation  of  man's  spirit  and  its 
[292] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

energizing  activity  to  its  highest  asser- 
tion and  fulfilment. 

Compared  with  Biography,  History 
is  dust;  Biography  is  the  living  clay. 
'  What  to  me  is  this  quintessence  of 
dust? "  Show  us  living  men  who  have 
highly  resolved  and  highly  achieved; 
men  who  dared  anything,  even  to  the 
unbinding  of  "  the  cluster  of  the  Plei- 
ades." It  matters  not  if  they  failed. 
What  does  matter  is  that  they  dared. 
Davis,  Frobisher,  Parry,  Franklin,  Ma- 
clintock,  Baffin,  Scott,  Nansen,  are 
names  that  ring  again  of  the  joy  of  dar- 
ing, in  spite  of  their  failures  to  attain 
their  goal;  and  Peary,  with  his  final  suc- 
cess, remains  the  indomitable  voyager  of 
earlier  years.  Sir  Richard  Grenville,  in 
that  last  fight  of  the  good  ship  "  Re- 
venge," at  Flores,  left  a  name  behind 
him  that  is  a  trumpet-blast  calling  to 
[293] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

honour.  He  and  his  hundred  men  and 
his  little  forty-ton  frigate  fought,  for  a 
day  and  a  night,  against  fifty-three 
Spanish  ships  of  war  manned  with  ten 
thousand  men,  such  a  fight  as  not  even 
the  pass  of  Thermopylae  witnessed.  For 
fifteen  hours  they  withstood  the  attack, 
sinking  two  galleons  and  killing  fifteen 
hundred  men.  Finally,  with  powder 
spent,  pikes  broken  and  eight  hundred 
cannon  balls  riddled  in  the  hull,  and  the 
"  Revenge  "  sinking  like  a  sieve,  Sir  Rich- 
ard ordered  his  master-gunner  to  scuttle 
her,  so  that  the  Spaniards  might  not 
boast  of  her  capture.  The  man  that  could 
die  like  Grenville  is  a  man  worth  know- 
ing. Read  of  him  in  Hakluyt,  in  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh's  beautiful  and  simple 
narrative  and  John  Higgins's  plain  and 
touching  prose,  and  the  heart  in  you 
must  swell  in  a  joyful  and  tearful  pride 
[294] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

in  this  great  soul,  whose  last  dying  words 
have  been  lovingly  preserved  for  us: 
"  Here  die  I,  Richard  Grenville,  with  a 
joyful  and  quiet  mind,  for  that  I  have 
ended  my  life  as  a  true  soldier  ought  to 
do,  that  hath  fought  for  his  country, 
queen,  religion,  and  honour.  Whereby 
my  soul  most  joyfully  departeth  out  of 
this  body,  and  shall  always  leave  behind 
it  an  everlasting  fame  of  a  valiant  and 
true  soldier  that  hath  done  his  duty  as  he 
was  bound  to  do." 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  a  Blake  and  a 
Collingwood  and  a  Nelson  and  a  Far- 
ragut  should  follow  him?  We  stand 
bowed  in  profound  and  humble  rever- 
ence before  such  an  embodiment  of  the 
human  spirit.  Surely,  this  soul  sprang 
from  something  other  than  a  mere  har- 
monious correlation  of  atoms!  We  re- 
quire no  philosophy  to  explain  to  us  this 
[295] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

valiant  and  true  soldier;  he  asks  for  no 
explanation;  he  is  as  inevitable  as  the 
ocean  he  sailed  on,  and  as  fulfilling. 

To  read  of  heroic  deeds  done  in  the 
name  of  honour,  or  of  religion,  or  of 
love,  or  of  country,  or  of  any  ideal,  must 
always  be  profoundly  moving.  It  should 
be  a  matter  for  gladness  and  hope  that 
so  many  heroes  have  been  made  immor- 
tal for  us  in  story.  Literature  shines 
with  the  glory  reflected  from  them,  and 
biography  specially.  Buddha  and  Christ, 
Savonarola  and  Luther;  Bruno  and  Co- 
pernicus, Columbus  and  Henry  Hud- 
son, Grenville  and  Nelson,  Shakespeare 
and  Wordsworth,  Erasmus  and  Knox, 
Newton  and  Charles  Darwin,  Socrates 
and  Plato,  George  Fox  and  John  Wes- 
ley, Livingstone  and  Cook,  William  Pitt 
and  Abraham  Lincoln,  and  all  the  others 
among  the  host  of  noble  martyrs  and 
[296] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

noble  workers  who  contributed  to  the  hap- 
piness and  the  liberty  we  enjoy  to-day, 
all  these  have  received  devoted  attention 
from  poets  and  lovers.  Any  biography, 
however  crudely  written,  of  these  men 
must  delight  us — their  lives  are  in  them- 
selves inspirations  to  their  writers. 

Let  me  recommend  Mr.  Fielding 
Hall's  The  Soul  of  a  People  for  the  life- 
story  of  Prince  Theiddatha  the  Buddha, 
"  he  who  pointed  out  the  way  to  those 
that  had  lost  it,"  the  Newton  of  the 
spiritual  world,  Mr.  Hall  calls  him,  "  the 
man  who  drew  men  to  him  by  love  and 
held  them  so  forever."  Read  the  New 
Testament  again  and  again  and  fill  your- 
self with  the  perfume  of  Christ's  great 
heart.  Plato  himself  is  Socrates'  best 
biographer;  read  especially  the  Apology 
in  Jowett's  fine  translation,  and  also  the 
Phcedo  and  the  Crito.  Luther  and  Eras- 
[297] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

mus  and  Caesar  have  been  splendidly 
realized  for  us  by  Froude;  the  first  in 
an  essay  in  his  Short  Studies  on  Great 
Subjects,  and  the  other  two  in  separate 
books.  It  is  remarkable  that  Froude's 
book  on  Ceesar  is  the  only  attempt  to  deal 
adequately  with  this  extraordinary  man. 
George  Fox's  Journals  is  a  masterpiece 
of  direct  and  simple  English;  the  fine- 
souled  Quaker  is  a  heartening  friend. 
Carlyle  has  written  an  essay  on  John 
Knox  which  must  not  be  forgotten. 
Robert  Southey's  Life  of  Nelson  has 
deservedly  passed  into  a  classic.  Lord 
Rosebery's  Pitt  is  the  best  summary  of 
the  great  statesman's  life  in  the  language. 
I  regret  I  know  of  no  life  of  Abraham 
Lincoln  I  can  recommend  as  distin- 
guished; the  book  has  yet  to  be  written 
that  shall  be  worthy  of  this  wonderful 
man  who,  in  his  spirit  and  character,  was 
[298] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

brother  to  the  few  great  select  of  this 
world's  heroes. 

In  the  English  language  there  exist 
three  biographies  that  stand  out,  head 
and  shoulders,  above  all  the  rest.  I  refer 
to  Boswell's  Life  of  Samuel  Johnson, 
Trevelyan's  Life  and  Letters  of  Macau- 
lay  and  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott.  Bos- 
well's  book  is  a  signal  instance  of  what 
literature  can  do  for  a  personality.  Had 
it  not  been  for  Boswell  we  should  never 
have  realized  the  manliness,  the  piety, 
the  wise  simplicity,  the  excelling  upright- 
ness of  a  character  that  now  commands 
our  delight  and  our  homage.  And  what 
a  piece  of  picturesque  realism  it  is  of 
the  literary  life  of  the  time!  Burke  and 
Garrick,  Gibbon  and  Goldsmith,  Rey- 
nolds and  Langton  and  Beauclerk,  all 
live  again  in  these  faithful  pages;  and 
in  their  midst  stalks  and  rolls  the  dusty 
[299] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

brown  figure  of  Johnson  himself — the 
Great  Cham  of  literature,  Smollett 
called  him.  Trevelyan's  life  of  his  uncle 
and  Lockhart's  life  of  Scott  are  both 
splendid  monuments  to  two  noble  lives. 
So  much  has  been  written  about  these 
three  books  that  it  is  unnecessary  for  me 
to  add  more.  They  should  form  a  part 
of  the  library  of  the  poorest  home. 
With  Bos  well  I  should  advise  the  read- 
ing of  Forster's  Life  and  Adventures 
of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  a  book  that  de- 
serves a  wider  recognition  than  it  is  re- 
ceiving. There  is  no  other  life  of  this 
kindly  Irish  and  humanly  vain  traveller 
on  life's  way  that  is  comparable  to  it. 
Goldsmith  was  a  hero  in  Forster's  eyes; 
the  enthusiasm  and  love  for  the  hero 
have  combined  to  give  us  a  book  that  is 
as  readable  as  a  romance  and  as  absorb- 
ing as  some  of  the  best  romances. 
[300] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

Gibbon's  Autobiography  is,  unfortu- 
nately, a  fragment,  but  it  must  be  read, 
fragment  as  it  is.  Walton's  Lives  is  a 
delight  at  any  time.  In  their  admirable 
simplicity  of  style  and  loving  treatment 
of  Donne,  Wotton,  Hooker,  Herbert 
and  Sanderson,  they  appeal  to  our  best 
emotions.  They  should  be  read  if  only 
to  know  Walton  himself,  whose  own 
sweet  nature  peeps  out  of  every  line  of  his 
writing. 

Carlyle's  Life  and  Letters  of  Oliver 
Cromwell  is  the  one  book  on  this  man 
that  counts.  It  is  the  only  book  that  has 
in  any  way  realized  the  great  English- 
man and  set  him  before  the  eyes  of  the 
world  as  the  man  he  really  was — a  stu- 
pendous individual  force  in  a  nation's 
history,  a  later  Richard  Grenville. 

Thousands  of  "  lives  "  have  been  writ- 
ten of  Napoleon,  but  I  can  speak  of 
[301] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

actual  acquaintance  with  only  a  few. 
From  what  I  have  read  and  from  what 
I  learn  from  the  judgments  of  others 
whose  opinions  are  of  value,  I  should 
say  that  "  the  real  life  "  of  this  remark- 
able phenomenon  has  yet  to  be  written. 
If  a  working  knowledge  of  the  facts 
and  events  of  Napoleon's  career  be  de- 
sired, there  is  no  more  informing  book 
than  Rose's  Life  of  Napoleon  I.  Na- 
poleon's secretaries,  some  of  his  mar- 
shals, friends,  mistresses,  retainers  and 
hangers-on  at  his  court  have  contributed 
their  "  memoires  "  and  "  souvenirs  "  of 
gossip  and  opinions,  and  those  who  are 
interested  in  gossip  will  find  enough  to 
amuse  them  for  years  to  come.  Bour- 
rienne's  Life  of  Napoleon  is  valuable 
for  its  record  of  Napoleon's  own  words, 
and  what  Napoleon  had  to  say  of  him- 
self or  of  anybody  is  worth  reading. 
[302] 


READING  BIOGRAPHY 

Pepys's  Diary  is  not  a  biography,  but 
it  is  a  man  and  his  times.  Read  it;  it  is 
a  feast  of  delight  and  a  stream  of  living 
pleasure.  Lamb's  Essays  of  Elia  are 
not  biography,  but  they  are  filled  with 
Charles  Lamb,  and  wherever  he  is  there 
is  joy.  Lamb  could  not  help  putting 
himself  in  his  writings;  let  us  thank  the 
gods  there  be  for  his  failing — he  has 
made  of  it  an  exquisite  virtue.  Mon- 
taigne's Essays  are  not  biography;  but 
they  are  the  man,  nevertheless,  and  where 
this  man  is  there  are  humour  and  pathos, 
wisdom  and  kindliness  of  heart,  gra- 
ciousness  of  mind  and  richness  of  knowl- 
edge of  life.  I  will  take  leave  to  quote 
what  he  himself  has  written  of  his  es- 
says : — 

"  I  erect  not  here  a  statue  to  be  set  up 
in  the  market-place  of  a  town,  or  in  a 
church,  or  in  any  other  public  place.  It 
[303] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

is  for  the  corner  of  a  library,  or  to  amuse 
a  neighbour,  or  a  friend  of  mine  withal, 
who  by  this  image  may  haply  take  pleas- 
ure to  renew  acquaintance,  and  to  re- 
converse  with  me.  Others  have  been  em- 
boldened to  speak  of  themselves,  because 
they  have  found  worthy  and  rich  subject 
in  themselves.  I,  contrariwise,  because  I 
have  found  mine  so  barren,  and  so  shal- 
low, that  it  cannot  admit  suspicion  of 
ostentation.  I  find  not  so  much  good  in 
myself,  but  I  may  speak  of  it  without 
blushing.  .  .  .  And  if  it  happen  no 
man  read  me,  have  I  lost  my  time,  to 
have  entertained  myself  so  many  idle 
hours,  about  so  pleasing  and  profitable 
thoughts?  In  framing  this  portrait  of 
myself,  I  have  so  often  been  fain  to 
frizzle  and  trim  me,  that  so  I  might  the 
better  extract  myself,  and  the  pattern  is 
thereby  confirmed,  and  in  some  sort 
[304] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

pruned.  Drawing  myself  for  others,  I 
have  drawn  myself  with  pure  and  better 
colours  than  were  my  first.  I  have  no 
more  made  my  book  than  my  book  hath 
made  me:  a  book  consubstantial  with  its 
author:  of  a  peculiar  and  fit  occupation. 
A  member  of  my  life;  not  of  an  occupa- 
tion and  end  strange  and  foreign,  as  all 
other  books.  Have  I  mis-spent  my  time, 
to  have  taken  an  account  of  myself  so 
continually  and  so  curiously? " 

The  world  long  since  answered  his 
question,  and  the  world  would  rather 
lose  the  records  of  a  nation  than  lose 
this  autobiography  of  Montaigne.  "  Je 
suis  moi-meme  la  matiere  de  mon  livre," 
he  said,  and  that  is  what  makes  his  book 
the  enduring  living  thing  it  is.  It  is 
what  draws  us  often  to  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  Religio  Medici,  and,  at  other 
times,  to  Amiel's  Journal  Intime,  and 
[305] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

at  odd  times  to  the  Meditations  of  Mar- 
cus Aurelius,  and  at  most  times  to 
George  Borrow's  Lavengro  and  his  Ro- 
many Rye.  What  we  can  understand 
and  love  and  feel  in  our  hearts,  that  is 
what  appeals  to  us.  The  life  lived, 
whether  in  the  spirit  or  in  the  body  or  in 
the  spirit  and  the  body  together,  that  is 
what  catches  us  and  lifts  us  and  sends 
us  travelling  with  light  steps,  singing 
carols  along  the  way  of  our  earthly  pil- 
grimage. "  Did  not  our  hearts  burn 
within  us  while  he  talked  with  us  by  the 
way? " 

Every  story  rightly  told,  every  biog- 
raphy truly  realized,  is  a  friend  walking 
with  us  and  talking  with  us  by  the  way; 
a  friend  telling  us  of  trials  suffered  or 
of  trials  overcome,  of  joy  lived  and  of 
joy  given,  of  pleasure  felt  and  of  hap- 
piness achieved.  And  in  the  telling  he 
[306] 


READING  BIOGRAPHY 

bids  us  take  heart  and  be  of  good  cour- 
age, for  there  is  a  way  to  happiness 
through  all  our  afflictions.  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  put  it  in  his  way,  in  his  prayer 
at  the  conclusion  of  his  Religio  Medici, 
and  it  is  not  a  bad  way: 

"  Bless  me  in  this  life  with  but  the 
peace  of  my  conscience,  command  of  my 
affections,  the  love  of  Thyself,  and  my 
dearest  friends,  and  I  shall  be  happy 
enough  to  pity  Caesar! "  George  Bor- 
row advised  us  to  "  Fear  God,  and  take 
your  own  part,"  and  there  is  much  to  be 
said  for  this  advice  also.  Samuel  John- 
son hoped  he  had  attained  nearer  to  vir- 
tue through  submission  to  God  and  be- 
nevolence to  man,  and  who  shall  say  that 
this  is  not  a  high  hope  and  a  noble 
method? 

It  is  a  great  deal  easier  to  go  down 
hill  than  up.  We  can  slip  down  by  our- 
[307] 


THE  PLEASURE  OF 

selves;  but  to  go  up  is  hard.  We  want 
the  helping  example,  even  the  strongest 
of  us;  we  want  the  cheering  word,  the 
comforting  laugh,  the  glad  hand.  All 
these  are  offered  us  in  literature — in  the 
books  I  have  been  writing  about.  Read 
them  for  this  pleasure  I  have  tried  to  de- 
scribe. Permit  yourself  to  be  open  to 
their  influence,  and  they  will  abide  with 
you  always.  Even  if,  in  time,  you  for- 
get particular  features,  the  memory  of 
their  companionship  will  always  remain, 
ready  to  thrill  you  again  at  every  touch 
of  friendship  or  any  play  of  fate.  The 
seasons  of  the  year  will  recall  them  to 
you  in  delightful  surprises,  and  the  very 
air  will  murmur  of  their  invisible  pres- 
ences. And  you,  yourself,  if  you  do  not 
rest  content  in  your  own  pleasure,  may 
become  a  radiating  centre  of  pleasure 
in  the  circle  of  your  own  home.  Your 
[308] 


READING   BIOGRAPHY 

books  are  your  best  friends;  do  not  keep 
them  to  yourself;  be  proud  of  them. 
"  Of  what  shall  a  man  be  proud,"  asked 
Stevenson,  "if  he  is  not  proud  of  his 
friends?" 


f809] 


LIST    OF    BOOKS 


LIST  OF  BOOKS 


THE  BIBLE.    (Authorized  Version) 

The  Oxford  University  Press  publishes  Helps  to  the  Study  of  the 
Bible  with  one  of  its  editions  of  the  Revised  Version.  This  nay  be 
bought  separately,  and  will  be  found  to  be  of  great  assistance  to  the 
student. 

THE  MODERN  READER'S  BIBLE,  presented  in  litenry 
form.  Edited  by  Richard  Q.  Moulton. 

LITERARY  STUDY  OF  THE  BIBLE.  By  Richard  C. 
Moulton. 

Professor  Monlton's  book  is  unquestionably  the  best  book  in  the 
language  for  the  literary  study  of  the  Bible.  I  cannot  recommend  it 
too  highly.  In  The  Modern  Header's  Bible  will  be  found  notes, 
and  historical  and  literary  introductions,  which  the  student 
will  do  well  to  read.  Professor  Moulton  has  also  issued  a  Short 
Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Bible.  The  essential  matter  of 
both  these  books,  however,  will  be  found  contained  in  the  appen- 
dices to  his  The  Modern  Header's  Bible  (one  vol.  edit.). 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  LITERATURE  OF  THE  OLD 
TESTAMENT.  By  S.  R.  Driver. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  NEW 
TESTAMENT.  By  B.  W.  Bacon. 

OUTLINES  FOR  THE  STUDY  OF  BIBLICAL  HISTORY 
AND  LITERATURE.  By  F.  H.  Sanders  and  H.  T. 
Fowler. 

BIBLICAL  INTRODUCTION.  By  W.  H.  Bennett  and  W. 
F.  Adeney. 

INTRODUCTION  TO  THE  BOOK  OF  ISAIAH.  By  T.  K. 
Oheyne. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  JEWISH  CHURCH.  By  A.  P.  Stanley. 
Stanley's  work  is  not  now  considered  the  most  authoritative,  since 
it  does  not  include  the  results  of  the  latest  researches;  but  it  is, 
nevertheless,  a  delightful  book,  and  is  written  in  a  captivating  style. 
His  shortcomings  could  easily  be  supplemented  from  Hastings* 
Bible  Dictionary. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  ISRAEL.  By  Ernest 
Re  nan. 


THE  BIBLE 


HISTORY  OF  NEW  TESTAMENT  TIMES.  By  Shailer 
Mathews. 

TRADITIONS  AND  BELIEFS  OP  ANCIENT  ISRAEL. 
By  T.  K.  Oheyne. 

BIBLE  IN  ENGLISH  LITERATURE.    By  J.  H.  Gardiner. 
BIBLE  DICTIONARY.    By  James  Hastings  and  others. 

THE  LITERARY  MAN'S  BIBLE.    By  "W.  L.  Courtney. 

The  author  does  not  treat  the  Bible  as  a  religious  book.  He  con- 
eiders  it  as  a  storehouse  of  literature.  He  gives  extracts  to  illustrate 
the  history,  the  poetry  and  the  fiction  it  contains,  and  adds  prefatory 
remarks  to  each. 

THE  MAKING  OF  THE  ENGLISH  BIBLE.  By  Samuel 
McOomb,  D.D. 

A  concise  account  of  the  English  Bible  from  the  time  of  its  trans- 
lation to  the  last  revision. 

THE  SOUL  OF  THE  BIBLE.  Being  Selections  from  the 
Old  and  the  New  Testaments  and  the  Apocrypha,  Ar- 
ranged as  Synthetical  Readings.  Edited  by  Ulysses  E. 
B.  Pierce. 

LECTURES  ON  ST.  PAUL'S  EPISTLE  TO  THE  CORIN- 
THIANS. By  F.  W.  Robertson. 

GENERAL  VIEW  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH 
BIBLE.  By  B.  F.  Westcott. 

SKETCH  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  ISRAEL  AND  JUDAH. 
By  Julius  Wellhausen. 

GOSPEL  OF  JOY.    By  Rev.  Stopford  A.  Brooke. 

CHRIST  IN  MODERN  LIFE.  By  Rev.  Stopford  A.  Brooke. 
I  include  these  two  volumes  of  sermons  not  because  they  are 
necessary  to  the  literary  study  of  the  Bible,  but  in  order  that  my 
readers  may  see  how  a  literary  man  extracts  the  value  of  life  from 
the  thoughts  and  examples  the  Bible  furnishes  him.  Mr.  Brooke's 
Sermons  are  among  the  best  expressions  he  has  given  us. 


[313] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS 


HOMER'S  ILIAD.    Translated  by  Walter  Leaf,  Andrew  Lang 
and  Ernest  Myers. 

HOMER'S  ILIAD.   Translated  by  Lord  Derby. 

HOMER'S  ODYSSEY.    Translated  by  S.  Butcher  and  An- 
drew Lang. 

The  Iliad  and  The  Odyssey  may  also  be  read  in  Pope's  and  Chap- 
man's verse  translations.  The  English  of  Chapman  is  somewhat 
archaic  for  a  modern  reader.  Pope's  version  is  Pope  more  than  it  it 
Homer. 

AESCHYLUS.    Translated  by  A.  W.  Verrall. 

The  Oresteia.   Trans,  by  G.  O.  W.  Warr. 

ARISTOPHANES.    Comedies.    Trans,  by  Gilbert  Murray. 

VIRGIL'S  ^NEID.    Translated  Into  prose  by  J.  Oonlngton. 
There  is  no  good  verse  translation  of  this  poem. 

DANTE'S  DIVINE  COMEDY.    Translated  by  A.  J.  Butler. 
The  Inferno.    Translated  by  John  Oarlyle. 

THE  NIEBELUNGENLIED.    Edited  by  Edward  Bell. 
(Bonn's  Library) 

LOOKHART'S  SPANISH  BALLADS. 

CHAUCER'S  CANTERBURY  TALES.    Edited   by    A.   W- 
Pollard. 

SPENSER'S  FAERIE   QUEENE.     Edited  by  R.   Morris. 
(Globe  edit.) 

MILTON'S  POETICAL  WORKS.    Edited  by  David  Masson. 

WORDSWORTH'S  POETICAL  WORKS.     Edited  by  John 
Morley.    (Globe  edit.) 

The  reader  may  begin  Wordsworth  in  the  little  volume  of  selections, 
in  the  Golden  Treasury  Series,  edited  by  Mat'hew  Arnold.  Arnold's 
introductory  essay  is  well  worth  reading.  Professor  Raleigh's  study 
of  Wordsworth  is,  however,  the  best  in  the  language. 

SHELLEY'S  POETICAL  WORKS.    Edited  by  E.  Dowden. 
KEATS'S  POETICAL  WORKS.    Edited  by  George  Sampson. 

BYRON'S   POETRY.     Selections   in  the   Golden  Treasury 
Series,  edited  by  Matthew  Arnold. 


[314] 


POETRY 


TENNYSON'S   IN   ME  MORI  AM   and  LYRICAL   POEMS. 
Both  volumes  are  in  the  Golden  Treasury  Series. 

BROWNING'S  POETICAL  WORKS. 

BURNS'S  POETICAL  WORKS.    Edited  by  A.  Smith.  (Globe 
edit.)] 

BLAKE'S  POETICAL  WORKS.    (Aldine  Poets) 

GOETHE'S    FAUST.      Translated    by    Anna     Swanwlck. 
(Bohn's  Library) 

Abraham  Hayward  translated  the  first  part  Into  prose  in  an  ele- 
gant version. 

OALDERON'S  PLAYS.    Translated  by  Edward  FitzGerald. 

GOLDEN    TREASURY  OF   LYRICAL   POETRY.     2   vols. 
Edited  by  F.  T.  Palgrave. 

BOOK  OF  ELIZABETHAN    VERSE.     Edited   by  W.  S. 
Braithwaite. 

BOOK   OF    RESTORATION    VERSE.     Edited    by    W.   8. 
Braithwaite. 

BOOK   OF  GEORGIAN   VERSE.    Edited  by  W.  S.  Braith- 
waite. 

OXFORD  BOOK  OF  ENGLISH  POETRY.    Edited  by  A.  T. 
Quiller-Couch. 

STUDIES  IN  POETRY.    By  Stopford  A.  Brooke. 

Contains  lectures  on  Blake,  Scott,  Shelley  and  Keats. 

WORDSWORTH.    By  Walter  Raleigh. 

OXFORD  LECTURES  ON  POETRY.    By  A.  O.  Bradley. 

STUDIES  OF  THE  GREEK  POETS.    By  John  Addington 
Symonds. 

A  STUDY  OF  DANTE.    By  John  Addington  Symonds. 
DANTE,  HIS  TIME  AND  HIS  WORK.    By  A.  J  Butler. 
LIFE  OF  DANTE.    By  P.  Toynbee. 

[315] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS:  SHAKESPEARE 

SHAKESPEARE'S  WORKS.  Edited  by  W.  Aldis  Wright. 
(Cambridge  edit.)  9  vols. 

Edited  by  I.  Gollancz.    (Temple  edit.)    40  vols. 

TALES  FROM  SHAKESPEARE.  By  Charles  Lamb.  (Gol- 
den Treasury  Series) 

ESSAYS  OP  ELLA  AND  ELIANA.    By  Charles  Lamb. 

LECTURES  ON  SHAKESPEARE.  By  S.  T.  Coleridge. 
(Bohn's  Library) 

CHARACTERS     OF     SHAKESPEARE'S     PLAYS.      By 

William  Hazlitt.    (Bohn's  Library) 
SHAKESPEARE:   HIS   MIND  AND  ART.     By  Edward 

Dowden. 

THE  MAN  SHAKESPEARE.    By  Frank  Harris. 
SHAKESPEARE.    By  Walter  Raleigh. 
WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE :   A  CRITICAL  STUDY.    By 

George  Brandes. 

SHAKESPEARIAN  TRAGEDY.    By  A.  O.  Bradley. 
HANDBOOK  TO  THE  WORKS  OF  SHAKESPEARE.    By 

M.  Luce. 
SHORT  SKETCHES  OF  SHAKESPEARE'S  PLOTS.    By 

O.  Ransome. 
BARTLETT'S  CONCORDANCE  TO  SHAKESPEARE. 


[316] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS:     NOVELS 

THE  GOLDEN  ASS.  By  Apuleius.  Translated  by  William 
Adlington. 

THE  STORY  OF  DAPHNIS  AND  OHLOE.  Translated  by 
Walter  Pater.  (Mosher's  edit.) 

Longus's  story  was  translated  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  O. 
Thornley.  This  charming  rendering  was  reprinted  in  a  limited  edi- 
tion about  ten  years  ago,  but  it  is  now  out  of  print. 

THE  ARABIAN  NIGHTS.    Translated  by  W.  Lane.    8  vols. 
Sir  Richard  Burton's  translation  and  the  version  made  by  John 
Payne  are  the  completes!;    but  they  are  somewhat  free,  and  the 
editions  would  take  up  too  much  space  in  a  small  library. 

MORTE  D'ARTHUR,  Translated  by  Sir  Thomas  Malory. 
(Temple  edit.) 

PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS.  By  John  Bunyan.  (Golden 
Treasury  Series) 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE.  By  Daniel  De  Foe.  (Golden  Treasury 
Series) 

GULLIVER'S  TRAVELS.  By  Jonathan  Swift.  (Bohn'a 
Library) 

DON  QUIXOTE.  By  M.  de  Cervantes.  Translated  by 
Thomas  Shelton.  8  vols.  (Macmlllan's  Classics) 

GIL  BLAS.  By  A.  R.  Le  Sage.  Translated  by  Tobias  Smol- 
lett. (Bohn's  Library) 

TOM  JONES.    By  Henry  Fielding.    2 vols.    (Bohn's  Library) 

TRISTRAM  SHANDY.    By  Laurence  Sterne. 

THE  VICAR  OF  WAKEFIELD.    By  Oliver  Goldsmith. 

HEART  OF  MIDLOTHIAN.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

THE  ANTIQUARY.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

IVANHOE.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

PEVERIL  OF  THE  PEAK.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

KENIL WORTH.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

GUY  MANNERING.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

ROB  ROY.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

WAVERLEY.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

QUENTIN  DURWARD.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

[317] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS 

THE  FORTUNES  OF  NIGEL.    By  Sir  Walter  Scott. 

SENSE  AND  SENSIBILITY.    By  Jane  Austen. 

PRIDE  AND  PREJUDICE.    By  Jane  Austen. 

MANSFIELD  PARK.    By  Jane  Austen. 

EMMA.    By  Jane  Austen. 

NORTHANGER  ABBEY.    By  Jane  Austen. 

PERSUASION.    By  Jane  Austen. 

HENRY  ESMOND.    By  W.  M.  Thackeray. 

VANITY  FAIR.    By  W.  M.  Thackeray. 

THE  NEWOOMES.    By  W.  M.  Thackeray. 

CHRISTMAS  STORIES.    Two  Series.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

GREAT  EXPECTATIONS.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

PICKWICK  PAPERS.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

DAVID  OOPPERFIELD.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

OUR  MUTUAL  FRIEND.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

MARTIN  OHUZZLEWIT.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

A  TALE  OF  TWO  CITIES.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

NICHOLAS  NIOKLEBY.    By  Charles  Dickens. 

WUTHERING  HEIGHTS.    By  Emily  Bronte". 

JANE  EYRE.    By  Charlotte  Bronte. 

THE  EGOIST.    By  George  Meredith. 

ADVENTURES  OF  HARRY  RICHMOND.  By  George  Mere- 
dith. 

RHODA  FLEMING.    By  George  Meredith. 
RICHARD  FEVEREL.    By  George  Meredith. 
DIANA  OF  THE  OROSSWAYS.    By  George  Meredith. 
VITTORIA.    By  George  Meredith. 
EVAN  HARRINGTON.    By  George  Meredith. 
BEAUOHAMP'S  CAREER.    By  George  Meredith. 
THE  CLOISTER  AND  THE  HEARTH.    By  Charles  Reade. 
THE  SCARLET  LETTER.    By  Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
THE  HOUSE  OF  THE  SEVEN  GABLES.     By  Nathaniel 
Hawthorne. 

[318] 


NOVELS 


THE  MILL  ON  THE  FLOSS.    By  George  Eliot. 
MIDDLEMAROH.    By  George  Eliot. 
DR.  THORNE.    By  Anthony  Trollope. 

THE    SMALL   HOUSE   AT    ALLINGTON.     By    Anthony 

Trollope. 

FRAMLEY  PARSONAGE.  By  Anthony  Trollope. 
BAROHESTER  TOWERS.  By  Anthony  Trollope. 
THE  WARDEN.  By  Anthony  Trollope. 

THE    LAST    CHRONICLE    OF    BARSET.     By    Anthony 

Trollope. 

TREASURE  ISLAND.    By  R.  L.  Stevenson. 
KIDNAPPED.    By  R.  L.  Stevenson. 
MARIUS  THE  EPICUREAN.    By  Walter  Pater. 
THE  AMBASSADORS.    By  Henry  James. 
DAISY  MILLER.    By  Henry  James. 
THE  WINGS  OF  THE  DOVE.    By  Henry  James. 
THE  GOLDEN  BOWL.    By  Henry  James. 
WITH  EDGED  TOOLS.    By  Henry  Seton  Merriman. 
THE  SOWERS.    By  Henry  Seton  Merriman. 
THE  KENTUCKY  CARDINAL.    By  James  Lane  Allen. 
MIOAH  CLARKE.    By  A.  Oonan  Doyle. 
THE  WHITE  COMPANY.    By  A.  Oonan  Doyle. 
WITH  FIRE  AND  SWORD.    By  Henry  Sienkiewicz. 
THE  DELUGE.    By  Henry  Sienkiewicz. 
PAN  MICHEL.    By  Henry  Sienkiewicz. 
NOVELS  and  TALES.    By  I.  Turgeniefl.  Translated  by  a 

Garnett. 

LES  MISERABLES.    By  Victor  Hugo. 
MADAME  BO  VARY.    By  Gustave  Flaubert. 
PIERRE  AND  JEAN.    By  Guy  de  Maupassant. 
PERE  GORIOT.    By  H.  de  Balzac. 
COUSINS  BETTE.    By  H.  de  Balzac. 
EUGENIE  GRANDET.    By  H.  de  Balzac. 

[319] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS:    NOFELS 


LOST  ILLUSIONS.    By  H.  de  Balzac. 

THE  THREE  MUSKETEERS.    By  Alexandre  Dumas. 

TWENTY  YEARS  AFTER.    By  Alexandre  Dumas. 

THE  VIOOMTE  DE  BRAGELONNE.    By  Alexandre  Dumas. 

MONSIEUR  BERGERET  A  PARIS.    By  Anatole  France. 

L'ETUI  DE  NAORE,    By  Anatole  France. 

LE  CRIME   DE    SYLVESTRE   BONNARD.      By  Anatole 

France. 

ORAINQUEBILLE.    By  Anatole  France. 
MADAME  OHRYSANTHEME.    By  Pierre  Lotl. 
LE  LIVRE  DE  LA  PITIE  ET  DE  LA  MORT.    By  Pierre 

Loti. 


[320] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS:    HISTORY 


THTTOYDIDES— THE    PELOPONNESIAN   WAR.      Trans- 
lated by  Benjamin  Jowett. 

HERODOTUS.    Translated  by  G.  O.  Macaulay. 

HISTORY  OF  GREECE.    By  George  Grote. 

HISTORY  OF  ROME.    By  T.  Mommsen. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CITY  OF  ROME.    By  F.  Gregorovlus. 

DECLINE   AND   FALL  OF  THE  ROMAN  EMPIRE.    By 
E.  Gibbon.    Edited  by  J.  B.  Bury. 

SHORT  STUDIES  ON  GREAT  SUBJECTS.    By  James  An- 
thony Froude. 

Essays  on  "Lather  and  Erasmus";    "Forgotten  English  Wor- 
thies"; "Homer "and  "Lucian." 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.    By  T.  B.  Macaulay. 
HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH  PEOPLE.    By  J.  R.  Green. 

HISTORY  OF  ENGLAND.    By  James  Anthony  Froude. 
This  History  deals  with  the  Tudor  Period. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES, 
By  J.  B.  Me  Master. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  DUTCH  REPUBLIC.    By  J.  L.  Motley. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  UNITED  NETHERLANDS.    By  J.  L. 
Motley. 

HISTORY  OF  THE  CONQUEST  OF  MEXICO.    By  W.  H. 
Prescott. 

HISTORY  OF  THE   CONQUEST  OF   PERU.    By  W.  H. 
Prescott. 

HISTORY  OF  CHARLES  V.    By  W.  H.  Prescott. 
THE  CONSPIRACY  OF  PONTIAO.    By  Francis  Parkman. 
MONTOALM  AND  WOLFE.    By  Frances  Parkman. 
COUNT  FRONTENAO.    By  Francis  Parkman. 

THE  CAMBRIDGE  MODERN  HISTORY.    Edited  by  Lord 
Acton. 


[321] 


LIST  OF  BOOKS:  BIOGRAPHY 


HISTORY  OF  THE  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  By  Thomas 
Garlyle. 

O-iESAR:  A  STUDY.    By  James  Anthony  Froude. 

ERASMUS.    By  James  Anthony  Froude. 

LIFE   AND    LETTERS   OF   OLIVER    CROMWELL.      By 

Thomas  Carlyle. 
PLATO'S  TRIAL  AND  DEATH  OF  SOCRATES.  Translated 

by  F.  J.  Church.    (Golden  Treasury  Series) 
This  is  a  translation  of  Plato's  Euthyphron,  Apology,  Crito  and 

Phaedo. 

MEDITATIONS  AND  THOUGHTS.  By  Marcus  Aurellus. 
Translated  by  George  Long. 

ESSAYS.  M.  de  Montaigne.  Translated  by  John  Florlo. 
(Temple  edit.) 

PLUTARCH'S  LIVES.  Translated  by  Thomas  North. 
(Temple  edit.) 

LIVES.    By  Izaak  Walton.    (Temple  edit.) 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY  OF  BENVENUTO  CELLINI.  Trans- 
lated by  John  Addington  Symonds. 

DIARY  OF  SAMUEL  PEPYS.  Edited  by  H.  B.  Wheatley. 
(Bohn's  Library) 

JOURNAL.    By  George  Fox. 

LIFE  OF  DR.  JOHNSON.    By  James  Boswell. 

LIFE  AND  ADVENTURES  OF  OLIVER  GOLDSMITH. 
By  John  Forster. 

LIFE  AND  LETTERS  OF  LORD  MAOAULAT.  By  Sir 
G.  O.  Trevelyan. 

LIFE  OF  SCOTT.    By  J.  G.  Lockhart. 

RELIGIO  MEDICI.    By  Sir  Thomas  Browne. 

LAVENGRO  and  ROMANY  RYE.    By  George  Borrow. 

AMIEL'S  JOURNAL  INTIME.  Translated  by  Mrs.  Hum- 
phry Ward. 

VOYAGES  AND  TRAVELS.    By  Richard  Hakluyt. 


[322] 


INDEX 


INDEX 


ACTING,  compared  with  the 
art  of  poetry,  158;  ad- 
vantage possessed  by  au- 
diences in  Shakespeare's 
time,  159 

ACTOR,  the  art  of  the,  157, 
158 

Across,  in  Elizabethan 
days,  152-53 

^ESCHYLUS,  his  genius,  115- 
116;  Symonds's  study  of, 
116;  his  divine  madness, 
137 

ALEXANDER  the  Great,  280, 
286 

ALISON,  History  of  Eu- 
rope, 285 

AMERICA,  its  foundation 
due  to  the  Bible,  49-50 

AMERICAN  Civil  War,  285; 
Lincoln's  position  in, 
287 

AMIEL,  his  Journal  Intime, 
305 

ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA, 
quoted  to  show  Shake- 
speare's love  for  wom- 
en, 174 

ARISTOPHANES,   his    genius, 


117;  Symonds's  study  of, 
117-118;  his  comic  spirit, 
118-119;  his  treatment 
of  Athens,  119-120; 
"The  Knights,"  120; 
"The  Clouds,"  120; 
"The  Wasps,"  120; 
"The  Frogs,"  120;  "Ly- 
sistrata,"  120 

ART.  Good  art  is  itself  a 
moral  influence,  215 

As  You  LIKE  IT.  Quoted 
to  show  Shakespeare  as 
the  poet  of  love,  178 

BACON     (Lord),     on     the 

novel,  210 
BALZAC     (H.    de),    "Pere 

Goriot,"     15,     218;     his 

character  in  his  Comddie 

Humaine,  220. 
BARCHESTEE  STORIES.    Trol- 

lope's  novels,  251 
BESANT,  Sir  W.,  on  the  art 

of  writing  fiction,  224 
BIBLE,  The,  what  it  is,  33, 

35 
BIBLE,     the     pleasure     of 

reading  the,  33-79 


[325] 


INDEX 


BIBLE,  The.  Why  it  should 
be  read,  36;  what  its 
translation  into  English 
did,  36;  its  music,  39; 
ministers  of  religion 
should  be  taught  how  to 
read,  41;  loss  of  its 
pleasure,  51;  the  spirit 
of  beauty  in,  51;  the 
Jew's  reading  of,  52; 
how  it  is  taught  in 
schools,  53;  its  devo- 
tional poetry,  56;  its 
reading  must  not  be 
compulsory,  57;  its  lyr- 
ical poetry,  57-59;  ar- 
ranged by  Prof.  Moul- 
ton,  60;  its  optimism, 
72;  its  secret,  72;  its 
value  as  literature,  77: 
how  to  appreciate  it,  78; 
its  writers  also  novelists, 
197;  its  influence  as 
biography,  292 

BIOGRAPHY,  no  chairs  of, 
in  universities,  259;  com- 
pared with  history,  287, 
293 ;  history's  true  philos- 
ophy, 292;  the  record  of 
noble  deeds,  295-96; 
every  good  biography  is 
a  friend  walking  by  the 
way,  306 


BLAKE  (W.),  "  The  Cradle 
Song,"  134-35;  "Love's 
Secret,"  135;  the  effect 
of  his  poetry,  136;  his 
divine  madness,  137 

BOCCACCIO,  124 

BOOK,  test  of  a  real,  17 

"BOOKS  in  Books'  Cloth- 
ing," 18 

BOOKS,  good,  19-20;  worth 
reading,  22-25;  world  of, 
25;  what  they  can  do  for 
us,  25-27;  companions 
and  friends,  29-30;  the 
pleasure  and  the  value 
of,  308-9 

BOOKS,  Lamb  on,  12-14 

BORROW  (George),  his  way 
to  happiness,  307;  his 
Lavengro  and  Romany 
Rye,  306 

BOSWELL  (J.)»  Life  of 
Johnson,  218,  299-300 

BOURRIENNE,  his  Life  of 
Napoleon,  302 

BRONTE  (Emily),  her  char- 
acter in  Wuthering 
Heights,  221 

BROWNE  (Sir  T.),  his  Re- 
ligio  Medici,  305;  his 
way  to  happiness,  307 

BROWNING     (Robert),    his 


[326] 


INDEX 


faith  biblical,  73;  on 
Dante,  124 

BUDDHA,  the  life  of,  297 

BUNYAN  (John),  222;  The 
Pilgrim's  Progress,  250 

BURNET,  History  of  the 
Reformation,  285 

BURNS,  "The  Jolly  Beg- 
gars," 56;  "Ye  Banks 
and  Braes  o'  Bonnie 
Doon,"  138;  "Highland 
Mary,"  138;  "Tarn  o' 
Shanter,"  138;  "The 
Jolly  Beggars,"  138 

BUTCHER,  LANG  &  MYERS, 
their  prose  version  of 
Homer's  "  Iliad,"  114 

CAESAR  (Julius),  280,  286; 
life  by  Froude,  298 

CARLYLE  (Thomas),  His- 
tory of  the  French  Rev- 
olution, 272 ;  his  "  he- 
roes," 285;  his  essay  on 
John  Knox,  298;  his  Life 
and  Letters  of  Oliver 
Cromwell,  301 

CAXTON  (W.)»  his  preface 
to  Malory's  Morte 
D' Arthur,  234 

CELLINI  (Benvenuto),  his 
Autobiography,  286 


CERVANTES  (M.  de),  Don 
Quixote,  250 

CHARACTER,  what  it  is  in 
the  novelist,  221 

CHARTREUSE  DE  PAHME,  LA, 
220,  250 

CHAUCER  (Geoffrey),  his 
character  and  life,  124- 
126;  his  love  of  books 
and  nature,  127;  "The 
Canterbury  Tales," 
128;  "The  House  of 
Fame,"  128;  "The  Leg- 
end of  Good  Women," 
128;  character  of  his 
poetry,  128;  Dryden  on, 
128;  his  influence  on  the 
English  language,  129 ; 
"  The  Good  Counsel,'* 
129-130;  a  tale-teller, 
197-98 

CHRIST,  as  revealed  in  the 
New  Testament,  297 

CICERO,  121 

CLASSIC,  A,  24 

CLOISTER  AND  THE  HEARTH,. 
the,  216,  217,  251 

COLERIDGE  (S.  T.),  his 
work  on  Shakespeare, 
144 

COMEDIE    HUMAINE,    220 

"COMING  of   Evil   Days,'" 


[327] 


INDEX 


lyric    in    "  Ecclesiastes," 

69-71 
CORINTHIANS,    Epistle    to, 

73-76 

COWLEY  (A.),  on  books,  30 
CROMWELL    (Oliver),    274; 

Carlyle's    Life    of,    279- 

80,  285,  301 
CYMBELINE.        Quoted     to 

show  Shakespeare's  love 

for  women,  174 
CYRUS,  286 

DANTON,  286 

DANTE,  his  poetry,  122-23; 
his  temper,  123;  Brown- 
ing on,  124 

DAPHNIS  and  Chloe,  212 

DAVID  and  Jonathan,  15 

DE  FOE  (Daniel),  a  foun- 
der of  English  prose, 
200;  his  sincerity,  219; 
his  realism,  222-23 

DERBY  (Lord),  his  verse 
translation  of  Homer's 
"  Iliad,"  114 

DICKENS  (Charles), 
"  Great  Expectations," 
15;  his  moralizing,  210; 
his  sincerity,  219;  acting 
in  his  stories,  220;  the 
quality  of  his  power  as 
n  novelist,  229-231 


DON  QUIXOTE,  250 

DRYDEN  (John),  on  Chau- 
cer, 128 

DUMAS,  his  D'Artagnan 
Tales,  251;  as  raconteur, 
236-37 

ECCLESIASTICUS,  Book  of, 
67,  69-72 

EGOIST,  The,  its  beauties, 
238-45,  247 

ELIOT  (George),  her  sin- 
cerity, 219;  her  Middle- 
march,  250;  her  Mill  on 
the  Floss,  200-1 

EMERSON  (R.  W.),his  view 
of  history,  270-71;  on 
history,  283 

ENGLAND,  greatness  of, 
due  to  the  Bible,  49 

ENGLISH  Revolution,  285 

ERASMUS,  280;  life  by 
Froude,  298 

FACT,  the  goddess  of  his- 
tory, 262;  the  chief  in- 
gredient of  history,  263; 
the  historian's  relation  to, 
264-67 

FACTS  of  little  value  in 
true  history,  274-75 

FAITH,  greater  than  wis- 
dom, 63 

FICTION,    current,    16,    17; 


[328] 


INDEX 


professionalism  in,  223; 
art  of  writing,  224; 
what  people  miss  in  not 
reading,  225;  no  chairs 
of,  in  universities,  259 

FIELDING  (Henry),  222; 
his  power  as  a  novelist, 
229,  231-234 

FLAUBERT  (Gustave),  his 
sincerity,  219;  his  Mad- 
ame Bovary,  251 

FORSTER  (J.),  his  Life  and 
Adventures  of  Oliver 
Goldsmith,  300 

Fox  (George),  his  Jour- 
nals, 298 

FRANCE  (Anatole),  his 
prose,  201 

FRENCH  NOVELISTS,  the 
modern,  223 

FRIENDSHIP,  essay  on,  from 
"Ecclesiasticus,"  67-69 

FEOUDE  (J.  A.),  217;  His- 
tory of  England,  272;  on 
the  historian's  art,  275- 
77;  criticism  on,  277-81; 
criticized  as  historian, 
282;  his  essay  on  "Eng- 
land's Forgotten  Worth- 
ies," 288;  on  Hakluyt's 
Voyages,  288-291 ;  his 
Short  Studies  on  Great 
Subjects,  298;  his  books 


on  Erasmus  and  Caesar, 

298 

FREDERICK  the  Great,  286. 
FRENCH  Revolution,  285-86 

GARDINER  (S.  R.),  his 
History  of  the  Great 
Civil  War,  268-269 

GENESIS,  the  story  of  the 
creation  in,  41-42 

GIBBON,  217;  The  Roman 
Empire,  284;  his  Auto- 
biography, 301 

GOETHE  (J.  W.  von),  his 
"Faust,"  15. 

GOLDEN  Ass,  The,  212 

GOLDSMITH  (O.),  a  foun- 
der of  English  prose, 
200;  his  sincerity,  219; 
Forster's  Life  of,  300. 

GREECE,  its  influence,  111 

GREEKS,  the,  as  described 
by  Homer,  109-110 

GREEN  (J.  R.),  History  of 
the  English  People,  271; 
criticized  as  historian, 
282 

GREGOROVIUS  (F.),  History 
of  the  City  of  Rome, 
271 

GRENVILLE  (Sir  Richard), 
the  last  fight  of  the 
"  Revenge,"  293-96 


[329] 


INDEX 


GROTE     (G.),    History    of 

Greece,  284 
GUICCIARDINI,    History    of 

Italy,  284 

GULLIVER'S  TRAVELS,  200 
GUSTAVUS  ADOLPHUS,  286. 

HAKLUYT  (R.)»  Voyages 
and  Travels,  287-96 

HAUL  (Fielding),  The 
Soul  of  a  People,  297 

HAMLET,  170;  the  personal 
element  in  the  tragedy, 
184 

HAMPDEN,  285 

HANNIBAL,  286 

HARDY  (Thomas),  his  The 
Return  of  the  Native, 
The  Woodlanders,  and 
Tess  of  the  D'Urber- 
villes,  251 

HARRIS  (Frank),  his  book, 
"The  Man  Shakespeare," 
148;  on  the  lyric  Shake- 
speare, 181 

HARRISON  (Frederic),  on 
the  choice  of  books,  23- 
24 

HAWTHORNE  (N.),  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  252-255 

HENRY  ESMOND,  216,  217 

HENRY  V.     Quoted  as  il- 


lustrative of  Shake- 
speare's life  in  London, 
152 

HERODOTUS,  criticized  as 
historian,  282 

HIGGINS  (John),  his  ac- 
count of  the  last  fight  of 
the  "Revenge,"  294 

HISTORIAN,  the,  his  rela- 
tion to  fact,  264-67;  his 
conventional  method, 
274-75;  Froude  on  his 
art,  275-277 ;  not  creative 
artist,  283 

HISTORICAL  novel,  216-17 

HISTORY.  The  child  of  the 
university,  259;  as  truth, 
260-61 ;  the  mistaken 
presentation  of,  261-62; 
its  bad  effect  on  chil- 
dren, 261;  how  written, 
263-64;  Emerson's  view 
of,  270-71;  the  right 
mind  for  the  writing  of, 
273-74;  the  value  of 
facts  to,  281;  Emerson 
on,  283;  not  much  pleas- 
ure in  reading,  284;  has 
value  and  meaning  only 
as  biography,  285;  com- 
pared with  biography, 
286-87;  its  true  philos- 
ophy in  biography,  292; 


[330] 


INDEX 


compared  with  biog- 
raphy, 293 

HOMER,  26,  109;  his  in- 
fluence on  Greece,  111- 
12;  his  influence  on  us, 
113;  translation  of  his 
"Iliad"  by  Butcher, 
Lang  and  Myers,  114; 
translation  of  the 
"Iliad"  by  Lord  Derby, 
114;  his  "high  serious- 
ness," 114;  a  tale-teller, 
197;  the  influence  of  the 
Iliad  and  the  Odyssey 
as  biography,  292 

HUGO  (Victor),  his  Les 
Mis  Arables,  250 

HUME  and  Smollett,  His- 
tory of  England,  284 

HUOK  OP  BORDEAUX,  200 

IDEAL,  the,  what  it  is,  92 
ILIAD,  the,  its  influence  as 

biography,  292 
ISRAEL,  ode  to  its  founders, 

46-47 
IVANHOE,  216,  217 

JACOB,  his  blessing  of  his 

sons,  46-47 
JAMES,  Henry,  on  the  art 

of  fiction,  226 
JAQUES,  170 


JEW,  the,  his   reading  of 

the  Bible,  52 
JOB,  Book  of,  60-67 
JOHNSON    (Samuel),    Bos- 
well's   Life   of,  299-300; 

his    way    to    happiness, 

307 

JONATHAN  and  David,  15 
JONSON,  Ben,  his  worship 

of  Shakespeare,  154 
JOSEPH,  the  story  of,  and 

his  brethren,  45 
JOSEPHUS,  History  of  the 

Jews,  284 

KEATS  (John),  his  "Ode 
on  a  Grecian  Urn,"  5-8, 
138;  his  "Ode  to  a 
Nightingale,"  102  - 103, 
138;  "Ode  to  Autumn," 
138 

KINO  LEAR,  Edgar's  words 
in,  applied  to  Shake- 
speare, 151;  quoted  to 
show  Shakespeare  as 
lyric  poet,  168-69;  the 
personal  element  in  its 
tragedy,  185 

KNOX  (John),  Carlyle's 
essay  on,  298 

LAMB  (Charles),  on  books 
and  reading,  12-13; 
"  Tales  from  Shake- 


[331] 


INDEX 


speare,"  143;  essay  "On 
the  Tragedies  of  Shake- 
speare," 143;  a  guide  to 
Shakespeare,  144-45;  ar- 
gument against  stage 
representation  of  Shake- 
speare's plays,  146-47; 
his  appreciation  of 
Shakespeare,  157;  his 
opinion  on  scenery,  158; 
his  Essays  of  Elia,  303 

LANCELOT  DU  LAC,  201 

LANGUAGE,  its  develop- 
ment, 196-98 

LAUZUN,  Due  de,  com- 
pared with  D'Artagnan, 
282 

LINCOLN  (Abraham),  285; 
his  position  in  the 
American  Civil  War, 
287;  no  real  life  of,  298- 
99 

LITERATURE,  the  value  of, 
48 

LIVY,  121 

LOCKHART  (J.  G.)>  his  Life 
of  Scott,  299-300 

LORNA  DOONE,  216,  217 

LOTI  (Pierre),  his  prose, 
201 

LOVE,  Shakespeare  as  the 
poet  of,  176-78 

LOVE,  Gospel  of,  the  final 


appeal     of     the     New 
Testament,  73 
LOVE'S    LAHORE'S    LOST. 
Quoted  to  show  Shake- 
speare   as   the    poet    of 
love,  177-78 
LOYOLA  (Ignatius),  286 
LUTHER  (Martin),  286 

MACAULAY,  217;  History 
of  England,  268;  his  art 
as  historian,  269-70; 
Trevelyan's  Life  of, 
299-300 

MACBETH.  Quoted  to  show 
Shakespeare  as  lyric 
poet,  169-70 

MAHOMET,  286 

MADAME  BOVARY,  Flau- 
bert's novel,  251 

MALORY  (Sir  Thomas), 
the  Morte  D' 'Arthur, 
200;  quotation  from 
Caxton's  preface  to 
Morte  D' Arthur,  234 

MARCUS  ATJRELIUS,  his 
Meditations,  306 

MARK  ANTONY,  280-81 

MARIUS  THE  EPICUREAN, 
Pater's  novel,  279-80. 

McMASTER  (J.  B.),  His- 
tory of  the  People  of 
the  United  States,  271 


[332] 


INDEX 


MEASURE  FOR  MEASURE,  the 
Duke's  words  in,  de- 
scriptive of  Shake- 
speare's character,  151 ; 
quoted  to  show  Shake- 
speare as  lyric  poet,  170- 
71 

MERCHANT  OF  VENICE, 
quoted  to  show  Shake- 
speare's love  for  music, 
171-72 

MEREDITH  (George),  his 
prose,  200;  his  difference 
from  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  235;  the 
quality  of  his  style,  235- 
36;  the  artist,  237-38; 
his  writing,  238-40;  The 
Egoist,  238-45,  247;  his 
courage,  248-49,  280 

MlDDLEMAHCH,   250 

MILL  ON  THE  FLOSS,  The, 
250-51 

MILTON  (John),  his  organ 
music,  130;  "Paradise 
Lost,"  131;  "H  Pen- 
seroso,"  131 ;  "L' Allegro," 
131;  "Lycidas,"  131-132 

MlRABEAU,  286 

MISERABLES,  Les,  250 
MOMMSEN     (T.),    History 

of  Rome,  284 
MONTAIGNE,     his     Essays, 


303;  his  own  opinion  on 
his  Essays,  303-305 

MORALITY,  bad  in  novels  as 
a  motive,  212 

MORALS.  Good  art  a  mo- 
ral influence,  215 

MORLEY  (John),  on  the 
habit  of  reading,  20-21 

MORTE  D' ARTHUR,  Cax- 
ton's  preface  to,  234 

MOSES,  Song  of,  50,  286 

MOTLEY  (J.  L.),  The 
Dutch  Republic,  273 

MOULTON  (R.  G.),  his  ar- 
rangement of  the  Bible, 
60 

Music,  Shakespeare's  love 
for,  171-72 

NAPOLEON,  no  real  life  of, 
301-2;  Rose's  Life  of, 
302;  Bourrienne's  Life 
of,  302 

NELSON,  Southey's  Life  of, 
298 

NEW  TESTAMENT,  The,  as 
the  Life  of  Christ,  297. 

NOAH,  God's  covenant 
with,  43-45 

NOVEL,  the,  its  growth, 
204-5;  the  moral  novel, 
209;  Lord  Bacon  on, 
210;  moral  purpose  bad 


[333] 


INDEX 


in,  212;  what  we  want  it 
to  give,  212-13;  how  it 
may  be  appreciated,  224; 
the  historical,  216-17; 
pleasure  of  reading  the 
great  novelists,  226-27 

NOVELIST,  the,  partly  a 
poet,  195;  his  aim,  196; 
his  art  and  aim,  205-9, 
211-12;  devotion  a  neces- 
sary quality  in,  218; 
sincerity  a  necessary 
quality  in,  219;  tem- 
perament and  character, 
both  necessary  qualities 
in,  219-20;  his  experi- 
ence of  life  compared 
with  the  poet's,  220;  how 
he  works,  221-22;  the 
best,  222 

NOVELISTS,  the  modern,  223, 
225-26;  what  they  do 
for  us,  255 

"  ODE  TO  THE  WEST  WIND," 
Shelley's  poem,  94-99 

O*SHAUGHNESSY  (Arthur), 
poem  on  the  poet,  86 

OTHELLO.  Quoted  to  show 
Shakespeare  as  lyric 
poet,  167-68;  quoted  to 
show  Shakespeare's  love 
for  women,  173;  the  per- 


sonal   element    in    the 
tragedy,  184-85 

PAIBT,  4 

PALESTIOTS,  the  spirit  in 
which  it  was  national- 
ized, 48 

PARKMAN  (F.),  his  his- 
torical writings,  273 

PATER  (Walter),  on  books, 
28;  Marius  the  Epicu- 
rean, 279-80 

PATTisoif  (Mark),  on  a  li- 
brary, 23 

PAUL,  St.,  286 

PEPYS  (Samuel),  his  Diary, 
303 

PERE  GORIOT,  Le,  218 

PILGRIM'S  PROGRESS,  THE, 
250 

PITT  (William),  Rose- 
bery's  Life  of,  298 

PLATO,  his  Life  of  Socrates, 
297 

PLEASURE,  what  it  is;  its 
effect  on  the  mind,  3-4; 
as  transportation,  15 

PLUTARCH,  his  Lives,  286 

POEM,  a,  what  it  is,  84 

POET,  the,  the  duty  of, 
49;  poem  on,  by  Arthur 
O'Shaughnessy,  86;  as 
conceived  by  Words- 


[334] 


INDEX 


worth,  88;  what  he  is, 
89-91;  his  work,  90-91; 
what  he  does  for  us,  93; 
completed  by  the  reader, 
100;  the  universality  of 
the  appeal,  108;  as 
shaper  and  artist,  137; 
the  revealer  of  beauty 
as  truth  and  truth  as 
beauty,  139;  our  justifi- 
cation of,  140;  the  aim 
of,  161 ;  greater  than  his 
poems,  165;  in  his  po- 
etry, 178-79;  the  pleas- 
ure of  reading  him, 
180;  compared  with  the 
novelist,  195;  the  first 
novelist,  197;  his  experi- 
ence of  life  compared 
with  the  novelist's,  220 
POETET,  devotional,  56; 
lyrical,  in  the  Bible,  57- 
59;  no  defence  necessary 
for,  83;  is  a  personal  ex- 
perience, 83;  the  appeal 
it  makes,  83-84;  its  na- 
ture, 85;  habit  of  read- 
ing, 87-88;  the  spirit 
of,  101,  136;  as  the  joy- 
giver,  101;  the  spirit  of 
suggestion  in,  101-106; 
the  mystery  of  the  spir- 
it of,  133,  138;  a  divine 


madness,  137;  its  value 
and  meaning,  139;  the 
pleasure  of,  139,  161 

PRESCOTT,  History  of  the 
Conquest  of  Peru,  273; 
History  of  the  Conquest 
of  Mexico,  273 

PROSE,  199;  the  difference 
between  early  English 
and  later,  200-1;  its  use, 
201-2 

PSALMS,  the,  52,  54-56 

PYM,  285 

RALEIGH  (W.),  his  study 
of  Shakespeare,  147;  his 
opinion  on  Shakespeare's 
sonnets,  163 

RALEIGH  (Sir  W.),  his  ac- 
count of  the  last  fight  of 
the  "  Revenge,"  294 

READE  (C.),  The  Cloister 
and  the  Hearth,  281 

READING,  the  pleasure  of, 
3-30 

READING,  casual;  no  pleas- 
ure in,  10-11;  a  stimula- 
tion to  the  imagination, 
11;  an  exercise  for  the 
mind,  12;  Lamb  on,  12- 
13;  a  touching  of  hands, 
14;  Morley  on  the  habit 
of,  20-21 ;  habit  of  read- 


[335] 


INDEX 


ing  poetry,  87-88;  how 
to  read  Shakespeare, 
156;  suggestion  for 
reading  Shakespeare's 
plays  in  public,  160-61 

RELIGION,  the  purpose  of, 
34;  ministers  of,  should 
be  taught  how  to  read 
the  Bible,  41 

RETURN  OF  THE  NATIVE, 
THE,  Hardy's  novel,  251 

"  REVENGE/'  the,  the  last 
fight  of,  293-96 

REVOLUTION,  the  English, 
285;  the  French,  285-86 

ROBERTSON,  History  of 
Scotland,  284 

ROBESPIERRE,  286 

ROBINSON  CRUSOE,  200 

RODERICK  RANDOM,  222 

ROMAUNT  OF  THE  ROSE, 
197-98 

ROME,  character  of  its 
genius,  121 

ROMEO  AND  JULIET. 
Quoted  to  show  Shake- 
speare's love  for  women, 
173 

ROSE  (J.  R.),  his  Life  of 
Napoleon  I,  302 

ROSEBERT  (Lord),  his  Pitt, 
298 

ROUGE  ET  NOIH,  220 


ST.  PAUL,  73-76 

SAVONAROLA,  286 

SCARLET  LETTER,  THE,  216, 
217,  252-255 

SCENERY,  its  effect  on 
Shakespeare's  poems, 
158-59 ;  Lamb's  opinion 
on,  158 

SCOTT,  fighting  in  his  ro- 
mances, 220-21 ;  com- 
pared with  Dumas,  237; 
Tales  of  a  Grandfather, 
272,  282;  Lockhart's 
Life  of,  299,  300 

SERMON  ON  THE  MOUNT, 
THE,  34 

SHAKESPEARE,  26 ;  his  "Mid- 
summer Night's  Dream," 
11;  the  spirit  of  his 
poetry,  105;  Lamb's 
tales  from,  143;  Lamb 
on  the  tragedies  of,  143; 
Lamb  as  a  guide  to,  144- 
45 ;  Lamb's  argument 
against  representing 
his  plays  on  the  stage, 
146-47;  Coleridge's  work 
on,  144;  Raleigh's  study 
of,  147;  Harris's  book 
on,  148;  public  opinion 
on,  149;  the  man,  150; 
Edgar's  words  in  King 
Lear  applied  to  Shake- 


[336] 


INDEX 


speare,  151;  the  Duke's 
words  in  Measure  for 
Measure  descriptive  of 
Shakespeare's  character, 
151;  how  he  spent  his 
early  life,  152;  the  kind 
of  men  he  met,  153;  be- 
longs to  the  people,  153; 
Ben  Jonson's  worship 
of,  154;  our  attitude  to 
Shakespeare  a  wrong 
one,  154-55;  what  our 
right  attitude  should  be 
toward  him,  155;  how  to 
read,  156;  Lamb's  appre- 
ciation of,  157;  the  po- 
etry of,  157,  178-79;  how 
his  plays  may  best  be 
listened  to,  160-61;  his 
sonnets,  162-63;  the  lyric 
poet,  166-67;  his  love  for 
music,  171-72;  his  love 
for  women,  173-75;  as 
the  poet  of  love,  176-78; 
as  Jaques,  180;  Frank 
Harris  on  the  lyric 
Shakespeare,  181 ;  the 
man  we  want  to  know, 
181-82;  his  pessimism, 
182;  the  tragedy  of  his 
life,  183;  his  influence 
on  us,  184;  his  tragedies, 
184-86;  his  rare  virtue, 


187;  his  final  lesson,  187, 

189;    his    philosophy    of 

the      universe,      188-89 ; 

how  to  accept  him,  190; 

his   offer   of  love,   190; 

his  greatness,  191 
SHELLEY  (P.  B.),  as  poet, 

94-98;  his  "Ode  to  the 

West  Wind,"  94-99 
SMOLLETT  (T.),  222. 
SOCRATES,  his  life  by  Plato, 

297 
SOLOMON,    SONG    OF,   9-10, 

57-59 

SONG  OF  ROLAND,  197-98 
SONNETS,       Shakespeare's, 

162-64 
SOTTTHEY  (R.)j  his  Life  of 

Nelson,  298 
SPENSER,  a  tale-teller,  197- 

98 
STENDHAL,  his  character  in 

La  Chartreuse  de  Parme, 

220 
STEVENSON     (R.    L.),    his 

style,  223;  his  essay  on 

Le    Vicomte   de   Brage- 

lonne,  251;  on  a  friend, 

309 
STORY-TELLEH,  the,  his  value, 

202-3;    our    request    of 

him,  203-4 


[337] 


INDEX 


SUGGESTION,  the  spirit  of, 
in  poetry,  101-6;  the 
joy-giver,  106-7 

SWEPT,  a  founder  of  Eng- 
lish prose,  200 

SYMONDS  (J.  A.),  his  study 
of  .ffischylus,  116;  his 
study  of  Aristophanes, 
117-18 

TENNYSON  (A.),  "In  Me- 

moriam,"  56 
TESTAMENT,  NEW,  its  final 

appeal,   73 

TESS       OF      THE       D'UKBER- 

VILLES,  Hardy's  novel, 
251 

THACKERAY  (W.  M.)» 
Vanity  Fair,  15;  his 
prose,  200,  217;  his  char- 
acter in  Vanity  Fair, 
220;  282 

THUCYDHJES,  284. 

TIMON  OP  ATHENS,  the 
personal  quality  of  its 
tragedy,  185 

TOM  JONES,  its  qualities, 
231-34 

THEVELYAN  (O.),  his  Life 
and  Letters  of  Macau- 
lay,  299-300 

TRISTRAM  SHANDY,  225, 250 


TROLLOPE  (A.),  his  Bar- 
chester  stories,  251 

TUHGENIEFF,  his  sincerity, 
219,  250 

TWELFTH  NIGHT.  Quoted 
to  show  Shakespeare's 
love  for  music,  172 

VANITY  FAIR,  220 

VICAR  or  WAKEFIELD,  200, 

235 
VIRGIL,  the  "^Endd"  of, 

121;  a  tale-teller,  197 

WALTON       (Izaak),       his 

Livet,  301 

WESLEY  (John),  286 
WOMEN,     Shakespeare's 

treatment  of,  173-76 

WOODLANDERS,       THE, 

Hardy's  novel,  251 
WORDS,  the  power  of,  38; 

relating  of,  198-99 
WORDSWORTH,     "  T  i  n  t  e  r  n 
Abbey,"  20,  104-105;  his 
conception  of  the  poet, 
88;  his  faith  in  the  spir- 
it  in    all   things,   92-93; 
his  advent  clouded,  133 
WUTHERING  HEIGHTS,  221 


ZOLA  (E.),  his  character  in 
his  writings,  220 


[338] 


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